The Blood of Stars
by perverse-idyll
Summary: Severus creates a prison of his own making, and the stars bear witness to it. He cannot speak of love, but as always in his life it becomes the key to both freedom and death.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a work-in-progress I took down shortly after posting it in 2011, because my life went off the rails and I knew I wouldn't be able to maintain a steady writing schedule. I've decided to re-post the first few chapters in an attempt to get the ball rolling again, because of all my unfinished Snape/Harry fics, this is the one I love the most. It's also the most indulgent and sentimental, but I figure I'm overdue to write a romantic (if angsty) opus for my OTP.

I started this fic for the Snarry Games 2009 and to my great distress failed to get anywhere near finishing it. Now, years later, I'd like to dedicate it with affection and gratitude to djin7, The Snarry Games, and all the authors who participated and whose works I love. You have made Snape/Harry a permanent part of my internal world.

The prompts I chose for the fest were 'Tongue-Tied' and 'Falling Star.'

Most of the early chapters appeared in response to the snape_potter community's Fix-It Fest on LiveJournal. I'll be doing a little revising as I go, but some readers might recognize those parts.

**Chapter One**

xxxxx

At first, it's dark and he's flying.

Always more graceful on his feet than on a broom, he shivers at the unexpected freedom. Not that he actually needs a broom. He knows how to fly without one; has for years. The exhilarating art of swooping through space—something most wizards never master—goads his heart, which stalls in his chest, then stutters back to life.

This isn't like straddling a cushioning charm while clinging to the handle of a wooden staff. He's soaring. The pulse of escape makes it worth the pain.

For there _is_ pain. Too soon, the downward spiral begins. He drops lower, darker, through an agony of sky. Freefall. The very air hurts. No, wait, he's got it wrong. That's not wind streaming past his ears—that gurgling sound, is it him? Bollocks. Water, then. Perhaps he's floating.

His field of awareness is shrinking, but he still senses disturbance. It emanates from—well, just over what would be the horizon, if such a thing existed. A sort of muttering. It's coming his way, advancing in ever louder echoes. Voices. Never mind that he can't see; he hears them approaching. Them. He tenses. More than one. He can sense where they are. He can almost identify _who_ they are.

Sod that. He doesn't want to know.

In the silence of his mind, he tries to force them to pass him by. They don't. They circle, squabbling like rooks. Furious at being found, he tries to banish them but can't remember the spell. He'd go instead (_let go_, he thinks savagely) but he has no idea where he is, other than in darkness.

Words start to peck at him, stabbing, shredding. This reminds him too much of life, in which he has no interest. If they're birds, then, let them fly away.

They're not. He already knows this, as he knows there's only one means of escape. He'd speed up the pace if he could, drain faster into the subterranean quiet. Die faster. Die. His stubborn heart sounds out the seconds. With each beat, pain drives a spike through his soul.

He wants it to stop. He wants to fly again. A hiss flashes in darkness like the cold, crescent-moon slice of a fang.

_Severusss_.

For one piercing second, his memories break the surface. Shock coils around him. He starts to thrash.

_No_, his mind snarls, _don't listen, you fool_. Harmless, the words are harmless, neither curses nor spells. They reach out like the withered fingers of an old friend, beckoning _trust me_.

Harmless, bah. He shakes off the coils, fighting to shed his life like a used-up skin. It's because of his 'friends' that he's here, after all.

Withered fingers… Get _off_. They have no business touching him. He'd turn his face away, but he's not supposed to have a face. An unswept, sawdusty odour hangs over him, and he smells the stink of blood on his breath. He knows, although moments before he didn't, that he's lying sprawled on a splintery floor.

Merlin, how he hates being helpless.

Somewhere in the distance, his fingers twitch, tacky with—it doesn't matter. For the love of God, it doesn't _matter_. He backs away from conscious thought, confused, unwilling to cooperate. What more can they ask of him? When your last breath is torn from you, what's left for you to give?

"Severus?"

He feels himself go deeper, as if a hand's pushing him down into blackness.

"Come, my boy, sit up. Give an old meddler the benefit of your company."

…_Albus?_

The dead hand that's sinking him suddenly grips, and astonishment yanks him up like a portkey. Parting time instead of space, it heaves to the surface a sunken chest of memories, the rotted happiness of a forgotten childhood.

Ambushed, his startled heart limps faster. His mouth opens, overflows with a horrible taste.

Merlin help him, he hasn't thought of it in years: the day he boarded the Hogwarts train. The beginning of the life he ought to have led.

Swollen against the padlock that holds his memories shut, the invisible lid of his heart flies open. He knows where he is now—Christ, yes, remember? That time. The best time. He'd been so excited he hadn't slept that night, and now it's happening, and he's packed, he's leaving for Hogwarts, and—

—it doesn't make a bloody bit of difference. His parents are that glad to get shut of him. _They_ haven't changed; he doubts they ever will. He watches his mum walk slowly down the platform, lighting a fag with the tip of her wand. She doesn't wave goodbye, so neither does he. Not to mention he hadn't even seen his da that morning, only heard the front door slam.

Well, the two of them can get stuffed for all he cares. He means it this time. He'll get along all right.

In that spirit, when the train pulls out he takes his courage in hand and staggers from one racketing compartment to the next, peering through windows in search of Lily. For a moment, having found her, it seems his luck's turned. His one friend in all the world, the only person dear to him, rises from her seat beside two self-declared Gryffindors and follows him out. Leaves them behind and comes with him.

Claiming a corner all to themselves, they stow their satchels and slide onto the shiny leather seats. Lily huddles so close Severus can hardly breathe. As peaceful scenery flows unheeded past the windows, he jitters with talk of magic and belonging. Lily scrapes her tears dry with the heel of one hand, and he wishes he owned a hankie so that he could dig it out and sneak it into her other hand, braced there on the seat cushion between them. Her skin is so clean. Even her nails.

When she sniffles and sighs and starts pestering him with questions, he dredges up everything he's salvaged from the stingy, slung-away references to school his mum drops in her rare confiding moods. Everything he's hoarded up to remind himself that he won't be stuck at Spinner's End forever. He offers it to her in short, fumbling sentences. Lily's heard it all before, but it's something he can give her, something to stop her eyes swimming with homesickness. And how daft is that? But maybe if your parents aren't total rotters (and of course they love Lily, who wouldn't? Although this line of thinking makes Severus squirm), maybe you'd feel a pang on leaving.

After turning the pockets of his memory inside-out, he adds a few stray details he invented on his own during long, boring broods spent confined to his room constructing the ideal Hogwarts in his mind. It will be the perfect escape, he's promised himself, and who's to say he's wrong? Maybe it's exactly as he imagines.

Because, bugger it all, Lily _should_ be excited. They both should. Because they're special. They're going off to be wizards. Going to a place where they both belong.

Once they leave the Muggle world behind, he'll show her, show them all, that no matter how unkempt and ill-mannered he is, no matter how unloved, he's brill at magic. Even his mum said so, never mind that she ruined the moment by grumping, "Not that it'll do _you_ any good."

But all through the trundling, agitated day, only Lily's presence drives back the nausea, the deeply-buried panic that keeps him shivering inside his secondhand robes. In the pit of his stomach, Severus knows this is it. If he doesn't fit in here, in this academy of magic where they teach the very thing that got him smacked across the face and sent to his room, where even the darkest is promised a place—well then, he never will.

Night comes on, and they tumble from the train to join the other children groping into the gently rocking skiffs. The black lake glimmers; the half-giant booms at them to hurry up. Lily stays with Severus. The oars drag ripples across the water, and the little boats bob like corks to shore. They step off and stand gaping at the silhouetted towers of Hogwarts: spooky, overwhelming, and older than dirt, and like nothing Severus has ever seen in his life.

He grins in sheer infatuated terror, even though he knows it makes him look like a yob, an ugly little hyena, which is his da's favourite epithet for him when he's well and truly pissed. It's as if he's about to step beyond the point of no return, to walk onto the sword with his head held high and die for—for he doesn't know _what_. Love, he supposes. Despite this almost unbearable happiness, his stomach's pitching a fit, and he's afraid he might puke.

Then Lily's hand tightens in his, and it's the beginning of all he ever wanted.

He's _home_.

And here comes Dumbledore, hoary and sly and haloed with power, to welcome them into the Great Hall. Later still, Severus clatters into the dungeons with the rest of his House, wishing with every step that he'd been sorted with Lily. He doesn't doubt that Slytherin's where he belongs, but he'd trade it in an instant to stay with Lily. He doesn't say this aloud, of course. He's not an imbecile.

Still, he takes to the dungeons like an eel to sea bottom. It's dark, private, neither grand nor rich, just subterranean power compacted with subtlety. He can smell the magic down here, it's so unique and—he starts learning new words to describe it—potent. Heady. The whites of the portraits' eyes flash as Severus explores the serpentine corridors; the ancient stones breathe history down his neck. He sneaks back to the dorm with traces of old spells tangled in the strands of his unwashed hair. The whole shadowy, sentient castle plays tricks, keeps secrets, shimmering with the sort of magic he'd always dreamed existed.

What a gullible little bastard he'd been.

"Severus, I know you can hear me. Open your eyes. There's someone here who'd like a word with you."

The sound of Albus speaking affects him like that now, with so much hope it makes him sick, the sense that things can go _right_ for a change. But they can't. They never do.

_Let me be, you old tyrant_. Loneliness is sharper than a serpent's tooth, but he prefers it to what the voice is offering. _Bugger off to your next bloody adventure. For God's sake. Haven't I paid enough?_

Apparently not. The darkness lifts from him like a broken glamour. Within seconds he feels the weight of his eyelids and knows, beyond all doubt, that he still has eyes to see with. The unfairness of it sends a bolt of rage through him. He follows the sensation, mapping its course through his body. He has a body. Fuck. This can't be happening. He'd been so sure there was nothing left to take. He'd even given away his memories—

Stop. Don't go there. The boy. His eyes. Himself, beyond dignity, clutching the front of Potter's robes while the whole wretched history bled out between them.

Dear gods, he needs to die _right now_. Why does he have to remember this?

Another voice chimes in, "Sev, look at us. Please. We thought you'd want— Oh, Albus, maybe James is right. There's no point to this. He doesn't have _time_."

Pain blazes through Severus, the cruel joy of the impossible. His heart swells to twice its normal size. Yes, it hurts, but everything does, and for once he doesn't mind. Gasping, he forces his way through the darkness, his heart thundering like wings.

It's her. Her voice. Oh Merlin, it's like flying.

"Maybe," says Lily, and the words knock him stranded and alive at her feet, "maybe we should just let him go."

It hits him like a Cruciatus of loss. His blood, his very tissues sing: _Lily. Lily, save me_. Pain, yes, of course. But a pain that matters more than any happiness. It drags him back, burning with terror and hope, from the oblivion where he would have preferred to stay.

In dreams he's known it, and now in dying. It's been so long since he last heard her voice. The girl who was more important than magic.

She's here. So he must be—fuck it all to fucking hell. Did he really believe the afterlife would be kind? He can't face her now, with his soul spread wide open. Every mistake, every secret will be transparent before her. She'll know. She'll know the worst, things even Albus doesn't. Every disgusting thought he's ever had about the Boy Who Lived.

For God's sake, how can he be expected to face her when just moments before he sent her son to his death?

"He's farther gone than I realised," Albus is saying. Then, "Severus. Pay attention. Trust me when I say this is important."

Right. He remembers. His hands, stuck to the floor with blood. His eyes, open and unseeing. But here—which isn't _there_, which isn't anywhere, he supposes—one last hope is being dangled in front of him. That must be what Albus is banging on about. It has nothing to do with trust, whatever the old hypocrite says, and everything to do with telling _her_ that he'd never meant—would rather have died than—

She's right there in front of him. Stop panicking, you idiot. Look at her. _Look_.

Stinging needles of light slide between his lids. Faces waver over him in a backwash of mist. His eyes start to water, and he's too weak to wipe them dry, helpless to do anything but let the moisture seep down his temples. As he focusses with wonder on Lily's shining hair, a third voice grumbles, "Oh for crying out loud, leave the git to his beauty sleep. He's made his choice. The world's better off without him."

The faces turn away. Well, of course they do. They always turn away when Potter's around.

_I'm glad you're dead_ ignites all through him. It consumes him, blinds him with reckless fury; the infinity of the lit-up world turns black.

Only it's no longer the darkness he wants. Once, yes, he'd been mad for it, had hoped to woo Lily through its beauty and power. He can never be rid of it now, for good or ill. But in a contest between them, he should have chosen her.

Albus tells the Gryffindor prick to have mercy. Lily sighs, "James, please," in a low, weary voice, and something inside him smiles. That his nemesis should be present to mock him at the end gores him with bitterness, but this is child's play. It doesn't hold a candle to consorting with the Dark Lord.

He doesn't have time. His entire torn and contaminated body understands that. Potter's presence is simply another reason to get this over with and let silence reclaim him. What else is his pride for, if not a means of paying off his debts?

The blindness eases, and he's amazed because Lily's still there. Elation wars inside him with the impulse to crawl at her feet. _If I reach out, I could_— No. Not touch her. He knows better than that. If he can't be purified, then he'd rather be punished. In a way, it makes dying so much easier.

But he can't go until he's said his piece. So he puts every ounce of his remaining life into the one word he owes her more than anything in the world.

_Sorry_.

Or not.

The act of moving his lips takes more concentration than learning to fly. Apologies come hard to him, but not _that_ hard.

Severus breathes fiercely, surprised that he's breathing at all. He tries again to shape the words, prepare each broken, time-worn syllable. Pathetic, yes, but he knows them by heart. He's lived with them for fifteen years, attentive to their ragged whisper during the snap and snarl of Death Eater meetings, caught short in the middle of potions lectures, where the sulky, torchlit, dimwitted faces, none of them hers, sat in rows and shrank behind their cauldrons whenever he raged, half-maddened by memory.

The empty phrases trickle over his tongue, tasting of copper and endless years of silence. He knows they're there, if he can just force them out.

_Lily, I tried to save—I'm sorry—don't hate me_—

But Lily just looks at him and shakes her head no.

If he could carve the apologies into his flesh, cut through nerve and crack bone, deeper than the Dark Mark, it would still change nothing. There is nothing he can do.

Frantic, Severus fights to raise his head and force out one hoarse, snarling _Please_. He does, and it pitches his body into agony.

His eyes roll shut. _No!_ Fire roars in his throat, and the blackness slaps over him. He disappears under it as if plunged into a lake. _The way Muggles used to judge witches_, whispers a childish corner of his mind. If you drowned you were innocent, if you floated it was a sign of the devil, and either way you died. Of course, he'd been a morbid child, and as a man the things he'd seen and done would make a child cry in the night.

Robes sweep his skin, and a dry, warm grip steadies his shoulder. The floor vibrates as Albus summons him back, wrapping his name in a mild Sonorus.

"Hang on, my friend. We won't leave you now."

_No, but I'll leave you_. How stupid can they be? The burnt-out wick of Albus's hand smokes in memory. Stupider than you'd think. His throat's scorched, but he hasn't sunk so low that he can't find his way back. Albus gently shakes him, and Severus stifles a growl. Though he'd rather spit blood than admit it, he's grateful for that reassuring hand, the heat of it along the join of his shoulder, because he's cold, cold and bare, and no one, no one has touched him in years.

…heat on the skin of his shoulder.

With an excruciating shock of self-awareness, Severus jerks awake. Panic rushes to his extremities, and he knows, wherever he is, that he hasn't a stitch on and is naked before them. And that means Lily, as well as James Potter.

He's _exposed_.

He wrenches himself into a sitting position, knees yanked to his chest, dying be damned, and hides behind the fronds of his matted black hair. Teeth clenched, he curses his pointy bones. Their starved geometry juts through his flesh, an invitation to ridicule.

"That's better," Albus says, with the barefaced cheek he sometimes passes off as kindness. It confirms Severus' suspicion that there's something he wants. Against the thin, bunched muscles of his back, the gnarled hand burns. Burns with the fire of obligation, branding obedience into his skin.

Marked. One way or another, always marked.

Hunched over his bony knees, Severus keeps his reactions at bay as a line of chipped brick walls emerge from the glittering fog. The empty street curves off into twilight. Grim against the silvery sky, the column of the mill chimney gives him the finger. His stomach heaves. Right, this is hell. He only just stops short of glancing around. No doubt his mum and da, as bitter in death as they were in life, are hovering behind him, faces sour with disgust. And if not? If they didn't bother to show? He can't honestly say which would be worse.

The urge to look overtakes him and passes. He already knows.

"Come now. Get your bearings, my boy. We've only a moment to talk, and then we must be off." Albus speaks as if to a homesick firstie, his long beard swaying back and forth, smoke-white, ghost-white. Of course, they're all ghosts on this twilight stretch of road.

Not daring to move his head, Severus searches for Lily.

She must know, because she crouches down directly where he can see her, dressed in outdated Muggle clothing. "Hello, Sev."

_Hello_. The fierce pang of affection he feels at sight of her sensible skirt, her woolknit jumper, her—Merlin, her _wedding_ ring—is dreadful. Her red hair's smoothed back and bound at the neck. She could almost pass for one of his seventh years, so calm and unspoiled is she, unchanged by time.

Miserable and entranced, he hugs his sparse shanks, pale forearms pressed together in a futile attempt to hide the Dark Mark. _How are you? What have you been doing all these years?_ Questions permitted between friends, questions he has no right to ask. She's been _dead_ all these years, and he's to blame. He does his best not to break down in front of her, because this—this is the crowning humiliation, to appear before her so defeated, stripped of dignity, so (the thought blinks rapidly through his mind) so _old_.

She doesn't speak, and he can't. Instead he tries, with the intensity of his stare, the ridging of his muscles, the way he digs his nails into the flesh of his calves, to tell her of his grief. That he'd repented the only way he knew how. And that, Merlin, he _misses_ her.

Sod it, this isn't working. He draws breath, ignoring the harsh, wet burn that scrapes the air.

Lily rocks back on her heels. "No, don't. Sev, please. I don't want to hear it." She makes a warding-off gesture, and Severus nearly bites his tongue in two. "Save your strength," she advises, gentler now. "You're going to need it."

With the reckless effort already gathered, it's like opening a sluice gate to stop a cresting wave. He hangs there a moment, then his breath rushes out of him with such force he nearly faints. His senses divide, and he feels it again: the blood of all those he hadn't saved, flowing out of him onto the floor of the Shrieking Shack.

Memories pour down, blending, overlapping, as they had when Potter appeared above him, a last mercy, a scruffy angel of death, and Severus had forced all the shameful secrets out of himself. (_Not all of them, dear God, not all_.) Now Lily shrinks from him again and again, a girl, a ghost, the name for his grief. Dizzy with the double vision, Severus braces one hand on the ground. Right, yes, he feels the planks through his bunched-up robes, the terrible, debilitating pulse at his throat, sees Nagini float past him in her sparkling cage, red eyes returning, a stricken green—Lily?—no, the boy, the brat he'd tried to save, his shocked, dirty face the last thing Severus will ever see, Harry Potter bending closer and clearer in the darkness until it seems that his eyes will swallow the world—

"Severus!"

He shudders and comes suddenly to himself, his nose bent sideways against his knees. Groggily, he props his head up and meets Albus' expectant frown, sharp over half-moon spectacles.

Albus has a stare on him like an ice pick. Every knob in Severus' spine aches with dread as he braces himself for whatever it is the old man has brought him here to say.

"Do I have your attention? Excellent. We're running out of time, so listen closely." Strong, crooked fingers squeeze his shoulder. "Severus. You must go back."

What? Severus flaps his head, as if stunned by a stray spell. No. He couldn't possibly. They can't make him. It's over.

A sickening thought slices through him like a knife: _you pathetic fool, it will never be over_.

Beyond the mist, Spinner's End dissolves. Red brick walls crust over into dungeon stone. The sky hardens into solemn arches hung with empty cobwebs. Severus scowls to hide his panic, his gaze darting to Lily. Slender, ordinary, ageless, Lily Evans crouches beside him, as distant in death as she was in life. He's twenty years and countless terrible deeds beyond her, and her innocence flares like a torch in the darkness.

He can't fathom how there can be such a thing, this depth of innocence.

She smiles, never mind that it's forced, and oh Merlin, how lovely to see them, those three faint freckles on the curve of her cheek, the slight dip of her left eyelid as if she's about to wink. She watches him expectantly, by her silence endorsing what Albus just said.

No escape, then. She will send him back, and how can he deny her? There must be something he's failed to do, some unfinished task he has yet to perform. It's haunting, impossible, as if even now he's thrashing in the sheets in the headmaster's bedroom, experiencing the worst nightmare of his life.

But the worst has already happened, opening the door to a lifetime of nightmares.

Severus lowers his head and feels a warning tug. Albus, still kneeling, has hold of his hair. Trapped, he turns to snarl. Go back?

"_Why?_"

The sound of his voice blares forth with the effort of bursting all restraints. Only there _is_ no restraint. Shocked, he turns to Lily. She sets her chin, and her eyes flick to James. Oh God. His lips move, and he presses his tongue against his teeth. When he tries to speak to her—only her—not a sound comes out.

She's _silenced_ him.

He tries again, with the same result. If he has something to say, apparently Albus is ready to listen. But Lily?

Her refusal to look at him is damning. She's not interested in his self-serving confessions. What good is his remorse? It won't give her back her life.

Severus' throat aches. He sees her point.

"I'm sorry," Albus tramples right over the tension in what he doubtless believes is a comforting voice, "but it would be wrong to let you suffer for my mistakes when you've struggled so valiantly with your own." He lets slip a small chuckle. "Well, some of them, anyway."

But the levity is a set-up, because he continues in the next breath, "You were right to be concerned for your soul, my boy."

The old man's face is so grave, Severus wouldn't be surprised to see his own epitaph appear on Albus' forehead. A chill nuzzles down his unclothed back, worse than Dementor's breath. What game is His Deviousness playing now?

"It's for your own sake that I urge you to return."

Oh, _that_ game. The erratic golden snitch of redemption. From somewhere among his fast-fading resources, Severus musters the temerity to snort.

Lily stands then, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt. "And you gave your word to protect Harry."

Pole-axed, he stares from one to the other. So this is what he means to them. But really, what did he expect? Lily called him Snivellus and spun on her heel. Albus chose him to be his executioner.

He's reluctant to speak, in case the pain knocks him back into that stupid, helpless state. But what about—

"Harry," he rasps, and the silhouette of James Potter steps forward, fists clenched. "I gave him—he has my memories. He must know—"

"Oh, he does." Still kneeling, Albus pats his shoulder, then gathers his garish robes together and gets to his feet. "That was very quick thinking on your part, my friend. The luck was with you there."

Holy Merlin on a hot cross bun, only Albus would call death by snakebite a stroke of luck. The old bugger stands beaming down at him, as if he's done something unbelievably bloody wonderful.

Severus has no intention of encouraging him in this delusion. He sneers back.

Sounding slightly put out, Albus says, "Well, I suppose it doesn't hurt to tell you. Harry has already come and gone."

_Gone_. Forgetting modesty, Severus lunges to stand and succeeds only in falling to his hands and knees. Albus conjures a robe and spells it to enfold him, and why the bloody hell didn't he do that before? The ends wrap his naked body, and it say something about his life that no person has ever touched him with the respect this robe does.

"The boy—the boy's dead?"

He's afraid to say it too loudly with Lily standing right there. In the little silence that follows, defeat bows his head downward until the ends of his hair draw patterns on the floor.

He misses the dungeons fiercely. The stone under his hands speaks to him, whispering of his rightful place. That's where he should have died. Something wild and horrible is tearing loose inside him, something he hasn't felt this desperately since news of Lily's murder reached him, set him keening like an animal in the headmaster's office. His fingernails scrape loudly on stone.

"Severus. Control yourself."

He whips his head up, hatred turning inside him like a snake. "A … lamb to the slaughter. Albus, what have you done?"

"So we've gone beyond pigs, have we? I'm surprised at you, Severus." There's a keen edge to Albus's retort, as if, God forbid, he's enjoying himself. "I'd have thought such Muggle sentiments beneath you. At this rate, we'll soon have you admitting Harry's human."

Severus pants with rage. It taxes him a great deal to maintain his glare, but he'd (witless phrase) rather die than back down. As exercises in futility go, defying Albus pretty much tops the list, but it's deeply satisfying in its own childish way.

It has its drawbacks, however. "Tell me," the cagey old bastard remarks, "since apparently we all need our memories refreshed, how old were you when— "

Severus almost crushes his face into the floor.

Albus demonstrates his cruel streak by pausing a little longer than necessary. "By which I mean, how _young_ were you when you made the decision that cost others their lives? And by the same token, blighted your own. No older than Harry is now, if memory serves."

Lily has retreated to James' side, and Severus can't bring himself to glance in her direction. Nakedness is nothing; _this_ is true shame.

Albus waits, then chides gently, "I thought you said you didn't care."

"The brat's a _child_," Severus croaks, on his hands and knees in this strange, hazy replica of the dungeons, a vile-tasting distemper filling his mouth and dripping from it like foam.

He coughs, and the already dim room swims before his eyes. "You left the boy—to face that monster alone. That's not—it isn't—" He can't finish the sentence, and the thick, gluey rasp of his breathing echoes off the nonexistent walls. The edges of his vision blur with the force of his wrath and the shining, shifting mist.

"Not what?" Albus presses him. "Not right? Not fair?"

Cornered, tormented, like an animal poked with a stick, Severus snarls at them all, so near the end of his strength that he fears his bones will snap from the weight of his hatred. He wipes his wet chin with the back of his arm; a disgusting red smudge slicks the surface of his robe. Every chamber, every corner, every nook and cranny of his soul flares as if he's _Incendio_ incarnate. He has no desire to die and absolutely no intention of getting out of here alive until Albus tells Lily that this time, this _once_, it wasn't his fault.

"Your concern for Harry does you proud, my boy."

Potter huffs rudely in the background, and Albus flicks his wand up. Silence rings like a sickle striking the pavement, spinning and settling with a conclusive rattle. "But as ever," Albus picks up the silence and pockets it with disarming cheer, "you jump too hastily to conclusions. When I say Harry's gone, I mean he's returned to fulfil his destiny and put an end to this dismal business. He will triumph, Severus. I do not make this prediction lightly. Trust me, there's more to this than you know."

Severus' blood—what's left of it—boils in disgust. Of _course_ Dumbledore failed to let him in on one last secret. Of course he did. It's so very Albus. Yet he has the arrogance to speak of trust. Offended, Severus folds himself together, refusing to dignify these insults with a reply.

Still, he can't stop his mind from working out the answer. "The Elder Wand?"

Again, Albus radiates an absurd glow of approval, as if Severus has just come top of his class. "Who do you suppose is its true master, eh?"

Numb in the aftermath of rage, Severus merely nods. He's resigned, not that he has a choice in the matter, and it leaches the last bit of stubbornness from him. He remains kneeling, his attention turned inward to where oblivion already rises past his waist. From the neck down, the sensation of nothingness engulfs him. Any second now it will swallow him whole.

Oddly, his mind wanders to Draco. Malfoy, too, is a terrible child, but he doesn't make Severus lose control the way Potter does. He doesn't drive Severus to extremity the way Potter does. Both boys, insufferable brats though they are, deserve a second chance, and he hopes they both survive to take it. Severus isn't even sure what he means by this, because by now his thoughts have drifted on to life debts and Unbreakable Vows and how very, very glad he is to be shut of it.

He barely notices when Albus squats down before him, a damp flannel draping his outspread fingers. The cool scrubbing rouses him, and his confused stare locks onto that of the headmaster, ice-blue over the rim of his spectacles. He can endure it for only so long before lowering his eyes to the thin-skinned, ministering hands. The curse-blackening's gone. He supposes he ought to care.

"I can do that," he mumbles, pulling away. The old man ignores him and continues to cradle his jaw, sponging up the blood. Severus hoods his eyes, content, almost leaning into the touch, hoping this will be the last thing he remembers. Unless—

"Lily?" he ventures through stiffening lips.

"She can't stay, I'm afraid," and although it's no more than Severus expects, it cores him like an apple. If life were fair, the sudden gutting would empty him of feeling. Instead, of course, it hurts like fuck.

And he'd do well to remember, this isn't life.

"You took anti-venins?" Albus murmurs.

Did he what? What the blazes is the old devil on about? Severus curls his lip. Yes. Of course he took anti-venins. Who does Albus think he is?

"And blood coagulants?"

Mm. He's not sure he remembers doing that. He might have. He recalls choking on the taste of blood-replenishing potion. He expects a good half of it trickled out the ragged hole in his throat.

Abruptly, his head rocks beneath a blow.

Without thinking he strikes back, swinging his arm out when his magic fails to answer and connecting hard with a fragile, silk-clad breastbone. Albus goes down in a gaudy spray of robes, like a capsized peacock.

A plume of glee streaks through Severus, and he almost laughs. _Merlin, I knocked the Headmaster on his arse!_

Then Albus is up and gripping him by the shoulders. "That's the spirit, my boy. You're not dead yet, and I won't have you behaving as if you were."

Severus gapes. He's been manipulated _again_, his whole body still ringing from the startled rush of energy. The robe begins to slip from his shoulders, and he clutches it. "Take your hands off me."

"As you wish." Albus shakes his head with ironic affection. "I'm in no position to make you fight for your life." Cobweb-soft, his beard bats Severus in the face. It's an occult caress, smelling vaguely of tea (Severus inhales helplessly, wanting more), sunlight, warm wool. Also, for some reason, sealing wax.

"I won't deny you deserved better, but the choice is now yours. You can die like this," Albus gestures to the emptiness, which to Severus looks like the answer to his prayers, "or you can have a second chance."

Severus pulls the robe tighter and tries desperately to think. So he has a choice, has he? That's new. Since when?

In the distance Lily pauses, one hand toying with her hair. Then she twists about, and her hand wobbles upward, pale as the flower that gives her her name. It dawns on Severus, with a flush like first light over the world's rim, that this half-hearted wave is meant for him. Not in absolution, but farewell. As much as his heart rebels against her going, it's as close to forgiveness as he's ever likely to get.

Faded and warmly familiar, her voice floats through the darkness: "When you see Harry again, please give him our love."

Oh. _Not_ for him. Severus cranks his shoulders up and hunches down between them, pretending he hasn't just made a wishful-thinking fool of himself.

"If I do this," he mutters as Lily walks on, linked to Potter even in death, "will you give me your word that you'll never ask anything of me again?"

The old schemer and string-puller, so accustomed to it being his hands that position the secret machinery of war, tucks those unstained fingers inside his sleeves and looks shrewd. "Even if it's for your own good?"

Severus narrows his eyes. Faint wrinkles of amusement pucker Albus's face. They vanish almost at once, but Severus' heart rises up against this man whose bidding he's followed across the threshold of death.

It has to stop. "Your _word_."

"You have it," says the tall figure almost absently. "Do this, and it will put you beyond any help I might have to offer. Or any hindrance. Is that good enough for you?" Try as he might, Severus can't scowl the kindness off Albus's face. "I only wish you to be free, my friend."

Dear _God_. His heart splits open in wrath and despair. "Then for Merlin's sake, let me go. Let me— "

"Am I to understand," the stern voice cuts him off, the words rebounding in distinct, undying echoes, "that after all these years, with Riddle's devastation of lives—children's lives—fresh in your mind, you're still capable of confusing freedom with death?"

Severus snaps his mouth shut. Sodding hell. Can Albus, after all these years, still flatten him with a well-placed word? Why is it his fate always to be outfoxed by wizards who use his blind spots against him?

Knowing he shouldn't, he glances over to where Lily last stood. But she's gone, and Potter with her.

He turns illusion-stripped eyes to his former master. "I'm not a student to be disciplined, you realise. Just tell me what you want me to do and be done with it."

Albus removes his spectacles, ostensibly to polish them, but in fact, Severus is sure, to give him an unsparing look at that age-mapped, sorrow-creased countenance, the slightly comical, crooked nose, the caved-in cheeks. It's not an indulgent face; one need only look him in the eye to see that, even if one hadn't spent years at his beck and call.

"Simply put?" Albus says, with a slight smile. "To live."

Severus waits. There has to be a catch to this, there always is.

Albus repeats lightly, "To live, Severus." He pauses, his silence like an unsubtle nudge. Severus won't give him the satisfaction. "I imagine this is the one card in the whole dreadful mess you weren't expecting to be dealt, am I right? The card I, with my plots so heavily dependent on one hapless page of hearts, held all along in my winning hand. And to my eternal discredit, forgot to lay down."

Oh, please. Harry Potter, page of hearts? That merits an eye roll of colossal proportions, but it's someone else's job now. Severus is too tired to manage it. Not to mention that Albus waxing sentimental is a sure sign of something fishy in the works. Is this how the greatest wizard of the age thought of the war, then—as an interminable game of Exploding Snap? Merlin save them all from obsessive old bounders.

"Take it now, with my blessing," Dumbledore urges, with the same ironclad bonhomie with which he'd doled out the various commands and cups of tea ferried to Severus over the years and his Hogwarts desk. "_Life_." He pronounces it with gusto, as though blowing a bubble of pure magic into the air. Then he perches his glasses back on his nose as if that decides it.

The mist is fading now as the darkness thickens, threatening to take Dumbledore with it.

Right there, Severus realises what the catch is. It's that Albus, having made his amends and dispensed his blessing, can say good-bye. _Is_ saying it, here, now, and suddenly Severus' throat burns as if he's been screaming with all the things he can never, ever admit. Bitter as it is to mouth apologies to Lily and have them die in his throat, telling Dumbledore anything—about the spirit in which he'd laboured under his strict counsel, by his side, in his crusade, anything at all of the grudging warmth that had been his only human solace for years—no, it's insane. All he can offer, by way of reply, is silence.

And his consent. Oh yes, that. Always, no matter what it costs him, his consent.

The pain searing his throat continues to spread, a presentiment of the end. All thin, shaky bones and bloodless skin, Severus throws open the robe and lies back, naked and cold from his bitten lips to his cramping fingers to his badly-clipped toenails. Staring up into the darkness, he takes a grim pleasure in speculating that they've waited too long. He wonders, in that case, what will become of him.

The eye-watering brilliance of the Headmaster's robes tints the mist coiling on all sides. It reminds Severus of opalescent snakes. Shivering, he looks away. But he's only ever had two friends in the world and he murdered them both, and this may be the last he ever sees of either.

So, in difficult tribute, he turns his face to Dumbledore. He thinks ahead to the people who loathe him, the Dark Lord who will gladly eviscerate him again, the boy saviour who has custody of his most precious memories, and wonders what in the seven hells Albus supposes he has to go back to.

"Good luck," says the old devil in whom Gryffindor and Slytherin are so intertwined that even Severus can't tell them apart. He's always understood that Albus is unique. "Don't be too quick to judge, my boy. And don't for one moment believe"—Severus is astonished; is that a faint note of pleading?—"that this is meant to punish you."

Severus' snort is so faint he doubts it's audible. He keeps his gaze steady, but even so he can't say at which moment Dumbledore fades from view.

xxxxxx

Then the darkness changes colour, and with no warning he's on fire.

Oh God _no_. Severus rears into consciousness on a bucking, pain-driven wave of terror, red and gold flames beating at his face. His limbs spasm with the instinct to roll out of the way, and from the base of his throat, where a knife seems to plunge over and over, rips a thin, eerie scream like a hawk's.

For one blazing moment he teeters between insanity and the raving denunciation of every good thing he's ever believed in, that he _allowed_ himself to believe, like a fool, an effing Hufflepuff, and the penalty for his stupid faith is this second, hideous, consuming death.

_Albus, what have you done to me?_

It's too bright; the hot, glowing waves slap the air above his face. He tries to turn over, but can't. A weight pins him at the breastbone. He tries to find an entry back into the blackness but the rippling light blocks his way. His knees jerk, his nails claw the wooden planks.

Then a trill lifts through the dazzle of pain: a song from the past so familiar and aching with the reminder of better days, that Severus' head clears, and he sees.

_Fawkes_.

Talons sunk in the blood-soaked fabric at his heart, the phoenix gives a cry, its wings outspread. They flare, the source of fiery light. And Severus is fully clothed and on his back and—not dead. His throat and hands, the entire front of his robes, are caked with blood, under him, around him, his face smeared, he can feel it everywhere, his hair sticky and stiff as if dipped in glue. His body feels host to a horde of Acromantulars shocking and biting as they crawl through his system, injecting venom at every turn.

Overcome, he stares at the ancient, enigmatic creature sitting astride him, for so long Albus's constant companion. The warm drafts from its wings sweep his face. About to speak, he finds his mouth filled with a meaty, iron tang reminiscent of blood pudding. He gags instead.

Fawkes curls its neck down to stare. Its eyes are as gold as the sun, and glistening.

As Severus watches, a tear swells in the bird's eye.

_Fuck_. Rebirth, whether he likes it or not. He trembles, outraged at the honour being done him, the heels of his boots knocking once or twice against the floorboards. He didn't ask for this. The bird trills again, intimate as a promise but a touch impatient. Submitting, but not bothering to be gracious about it, Severus lets his head roll sideways, away from the gilded feathers. Past shimmering pinions he can dimly see the old, broken-down table and the crates pushed to the wall. When the first hot splash seeps into his throat's volcanic crater, lighting up torn flesh and clotted blood with a crackle of magic, he squeezes his eyes shut, holding back the fear, the agony, the strange, soothing feeling of being cared for.

Fawkes weeps with precision, and a tingle like molten gold, like the finest distillation of the purest essences, filters through Severus' veins. Poison dissolves wherever it touches, spreading balm to his depleted soul. Eyes closed in bliss, he floats on the scuffed, red-stained floor. Inside the shack it's dark, but sunlight streams through him, warming his sore muscles.

In that warmth, he catches a whiff of sealing wax and fragrant vapour. Oh, tea. Black, steaming, unsweetened _tea_. His mouth waters. Merlin, what he wouldn't give for a cup. The disgusting mess blocking his throat melts suddenly away; he can swallow again without wanting to be sick.

Wings buffet his face then, and the spell breaks. Fawkes pushes off, the sudden downward thrust pressing a grunt from Severus. Tangled in soiled robes, he curls onto his side, his eyes flinching open to follow the bird's path. Fawkes circles the room once, then glides to perch neatly on a dresser sitting canted in a scatter of wood shavings. The shack is pitch-dark, but the phoenix gives off a hearth-glow, golden and flickering, sweeping back the shadows to show every stick of furniture gnawed to paisley patterns.

Evidently Merlin smiles upon parasites. The insects here don't give a flipping sickle about the comings and goings of Dark Lords or werewolves.

The Dark Lord.

_Potter_.

Oh gods, to what fresh hell has he wakened?

No tiniest shaft of light through the boarded-up windows. Past sunset, then. Nervous tension urges Severus to follow the phoenix's example and—well, not literally fly, but at least get the bleeding fuck to his feet. The war might be over. During the time he spent yearning toward Lily and quarrelling with Dumbledore, all might have been lost. Or, hard though it is to share Albus' confidence, won.

Either way, no matter who the victor is, he can't be found like this.

He fans his fingers out in the darkness. "_Accio_ wand." The shaft stings his palm, as precise and quiet as his own deep whisper. The thin shock as his hand closes, like metal snapping to a magnet, is what finally persuades him he's really here, really alive, and since there's no going back he might as well stand all the way up and go forward.

Swaying a bit, not trusting the strength of his limbs or anything in between, he positions his feet and pushes upright, the encrusted robes heavy upon him.

Almost without thinking, he grips his throat. A slippery band of scar tissue meets his questing fingers. Considering that his flesh had been shredded like a tea towel, he's not about to quibble. There's a pulse beneath the skin, and that's all that matters.

Great sopping quantities of blood cover his clothing, rigid as dragonhide by now. Severus wonders how long he's been lying there, then puts it from his mind. Cursing the boards that creak beneath his feet, he staggers to the door. Spelling it wide, he hangs back and listens, straining his eyes against the dark. A rush of night air envelops him in a steady breeze, smelling of trees and earth and sky. It's bracingly cold. Inhaling the fragrance of the world, he lifts his wand and Scourgifies himself three times in succession. Even with all the dried, flaking gore removed, all the grease from his hair, and what might be an outer layer of skin, he still feels steeped in blood.

Soap and scalding water and hot food and clean sheets and a year's worth, at least, of Dreamless Sleep might expunge it someday, but he doubts it matters. He doesn't really expect to live that long.

Holding the warped doorframe, he steps awkwardly outside. He knows the earth's not tilting but it somehow feels that way. The ground beneath his feet is restless with leaves. Ominous masses of trees crowd the shack, long walls of secrecy and darkness. He can't see a thing but knows better than to cast Lumos.

Above him, a rustling whoosh blows straggles of hair forward into his face. Fawkes swoops past like a flaming arrow, tail feathers trailing sparks. Severus jerks his head up, but the irate words die as beyond the pitch-black eaves the silent, winking infinity of the heavens calls out to him, catches him, siphoning his attention up and away past all imagining. Such a random spatter of stars, crisp and twinkling like frost in the void.

Forgotten, his body seems to fall away.

A beautiful, pleading sound, sublimely inhuman, rouses him centuries, seconds, later. He's on his sodding _knees_. The dizzying weight of the sky bears him down—bruising his shins, damn it. Flushed with embarrassment, Severus staggers back up and smacks dirt from his trouser legs.

The phoenix skims behind him to land with a flurried thump atop the shack. In its feeble flicker Severus realises how bedraggled the bird really is. It looks as wretched and tattered as he feels.

With arthritic slowness, the droopy wings hike upward and spread apart feather by feather. Head cocked, Fawkes pins him in place with one golden eye, and Severus submits.

Beak cracking open, the phoenix bursts into song.

Knowing he should leave, knowing that the glorious outpouring will draw Hogsmeade residents to this spot by the dozens, Severus tarries. Because this is for him. It won't last, and once it's over he'll be alone again, he knows that.

He knots both hands around his wand and lets the fiery starlight in that sound inhabit every crack inside him unclaimed by darkness. The beauty of it cauterises his breast. He endures the ecstatic ache without protest: poison crossed with joy. Later, assuming he lives that long, he'll find a way to blend them, make of his deepest feelings a mirror of the night sky, brilliance and the abyss.

He doesn't say, "Thank you." If that's petty, so be it. After all, this isn't about him, it's about Potter. They've made that perfectly clear. How can they expect him to feel gratitude when he still bristles with betrayal, the knowledge of how much the boy is loved when he is not? At least Fawkes welcomes him back, in such a way that Severus is reminded of the universe beyond the wizarding world, how the map of infinity consists of intense, unfathomable burnings in a waste of emptiness. If he needs consolation, he knows where to look.

The wild, rippling trill echoes to silence, and the phoenix bursts into flames.

Severus stumbles back, crashing into a tree and almost falling. Heat crackles, licks outward, radiating from the feathered body, consuming it while a golden halo pulses upward into the night. Mesmerised, Severus watches as the scruff of dead leaves on the roof, the dry, split timbers, begin to spark.

Smoke leaks into the sky. If it didn't betray the very existence this conflagration is meant to hide, he'd stay. Oh God, to the bitter end. His racing heart almost chokes him at the thought of this hellhole reduced to a pile of smouldering timber. One more nightmare vanquished.

Flames spit through the boarded-up windows. The glare scratches at his eyes. Lips skinned back from his teeth in a snarling grin, he squints at the spreading blaze. The tree trunks and windswept branches surge in and out of view, shadows clawed to gold. Inside the shack something explodes, savage with splintering wood. Banners of fire flap upward in the wind. The roof sags, caves in, and Fawkes's burning skeleton goes down with a roar.

Severus retreats behind leafy cover, firelight beating feverishly at his face. If someone were to find him now, he suspects he'd look as skeletal as Fawkes, his soul burning just beneath the surface, his heart as blackened and inflamed as the geyser of fire that had once been a shack.

He touches his scarred throat. The feel of it stirs him to speak, harsh by contrast with the lingering echoes of phoenix song. "I will do my best. But if I die again, for fuck's sake, do not bring me back."

Then, with no idea what awaits him, he turns on his heel and Apparates to Hogwarts.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

It takes every trick at his disposal to make his way through the gates and into the castle. Disillusionment charms, Notice-Me-Nots, a glamour for good measure. He bolsters them all with his gift of stealth. Severus can't count the number of times he'd likely be dead if not for his ability to move in silence—what the Gryffindors call _sneaking_. As if their beloved Boy Who Couldn't Be Buggered to Obey the Bloody Rules weren't this generation's all-time champion of skulking about. As much as it plagued him that Potter was forever roaming the halls making a target of himself, he suspects it was good practise for the brat as well.

At first, having set foot on the grounds from which he'd flown—literally flown, the shrill starburst of glass like a shower of sparks on his face—he hovers in the shadows, freezing in his tracks whenever he senses a presence nearby. He sees Aurors around every corner, and the weary, shellshocked faces of students. His breath roughens. Odd, that hope should feel so much like gasping in pain. But they wouldn't be stumbling over the grounds and through the halls so freely, weeping and embracing, conferring in loud, satisfied voices, if their side had lost. It's over. This must be the aftermath. Hadn't Potter gone forth, in Albus's words, to "finish it"?

For God's sake—no, for everyone's sake, let it be finished.

Severus hesitates before actually entering the castle. Being inside means blocking out the stars. He's not sure he can bear their absence, that he can face these allies who'd cry him enemy and curse him to his knees, face this home that has also been his prison, without their clear, dark fire to guide him. They signify more to him than life. They're like a promise that life isn't the only thing that matters.

Disgusted with himself, he spits on the ground, furls his robe tightly, and hugs his (breathing, unbloodied) chest. Nerves taut, he waits, shrouded and impatient, until he sees two students limping for the entrance. He melts out of the darkness to follow them. Bold as you please, he tails them inside, past two Aurors whose glances linger on him without challenging the glamour. Fully expecting to be knocked off his feet, Severus berates them furiously in his mind when he walks free.

Having gained entry to the winning side, he maintains an expression of grim satisfaction, not needing to fake the grimness but feeling more peculiar by the minute as he parades half-smiling through the halls. The two students glance back at him, tired faces grimy and soot-stained. One sports the blue-green knob of a bruise on her forehead. (Chaffink and Sinbourne, his mind supplies. Hufflepuff. Gryffindor.) Perturbed by his heavily charmed presence, they hurry on ahead. He waits as they take turns helping each other up the stairs before he fades back into an alcove, away from the flicker of torchlight.

His back collides with the unyielding wall, and he's surprised to find he needs its support. He spreads his shaking hands to either side, rubbing the cold stone, the rough, unbroken grain of it, over and over. He's shivering from head to toe, and it's a moment before he recognizes his weakness as gratitude.

Well, doesn't that just take the fucking cake. But he can't move on yet, he's so sodding glad that the castle's still standing. That the monsters responsible are all captive or dead.

Except for himself, of course. Even he's not sure what he is anymore.

Calmer at last, Severus pries himself away from the wall and starts searching. His task is to find Potter. After that, only Albus knows. He ducks out of sight as often as he can, but when he must, he strides along in full view, wand out, head high, trusting to his muffling spells, his distraction spells, and his practice at sustaining multiple and contradictory façades. He passes scorch marks on the walls, paintings blasted with their canvases hanging in shreds, the great hourglasses of the four houses shattered, jewelled points glittering across the floor, the stone lion sprawled out, the snake beheaded.

It's so quiet in the corridors and classrooms that a single raised voice bounces in the distance like a cry for help. Echoes flitter around him, swift as bats, and resolve into clattering footsteps. Groups of students pass him in their battlestained robes, followed by pairs of Aurors, twitchy with unsated violence. Each time, Severus nods, and his stomach muscles clench. Each time that he's not stopped or hexed, he marvels.

Between one corner and the next he's distracted by his hands, and almost trips because he can't stop turning them over and back, his bone-thin, bone-pale fingers. He's alive. These hands are his. He has to force himself to stop staring.

He'll run mad if he keeps this up.

Belatedly he remembers to stay alert for the people who know him best, and barely has time to backtrack beneath a staircase as he spots Minerva rounding a corner. Cobwebs wander his cheeks, too much like Albus's fingers coaxing him back from the darkness. He murmurs a spell to weave their gossamer clots into his Disillusionment charm, then wraps it around himself like some dark twin of Potter's cloak, pure shadow instead of transparency.

As Minerva rustles by, goldleaf from the torchlight dabs at her face. Severus frowns. Her eyes are deeply socketed, unshed tears seaming her cheeks and pinching her chin. But she's alive, and another silent tremor makes its watery way through him. Had it been in his power, she's one of those he would have chosen to save.

Good, then. That's another one off his conscience. He watches her straight back continue down the hall until she turns, hikes up the hem of her robe, and slowly begins taking the stairs. The massive structure above him rumbles and wheels sideways, and he's left standing there, exposed, covered in grimy, spidery veils.

Heart thumping, beginning to wonder if he actually exists, he makes his silent, unseen way to the Great Hall.

One of the huge wooden doors is skewed off its hinges. Beyond, people mill about, far too many for Severus' liking. He smells blood, fear, the chalky odour of pulverized stone, the stink of smothered fires. He's found the place of mourning.

Merlin, he doesn't want to go in there.

The fragrance of piping-hot meat and oven-baked crusts—mutton pasties, he thinks—sorts oddly with the sharp whiff of spent curses. He can hear the high voices of children, the deep, gasping sobs of grown wizards who sound as if they're being punched in the stomach over and over. The air is frail with weeping. Rows of floating candles hang in wistful arches, casting a burnished glimmer over the room. It's hushed, desolate, in very deep perspective and mostly in darkness.

The hall is vast. He remembers his first sight of it as a child, how frightened and out of place he'd felt, confronting such splendour. Back then, in the beginning, it had been the enchanted light, the blaze of glory as much as the sheer size of it that dazzled him.

Here and now, no victory hums under the skin. There's none of the laughter he'd heard in the halls, no terrible relief at a job well done. Those not gathered to grieve are holding conference. They sit at the House tables, whisper and point, shake their heads, scribble notes on parchment. Plates of half-eaten food are scattered in semi-circles around them.

Severus flattens himself in the doorway, sidles around it and stands apart, with a swift eye marking exits and mapping out the location of the people he must avoid at all costs. He's ironically thankful that the Hogwarts stones don't erupt beneath his feet or otherwise betray his presence.

All right, nothing for it. Now, for no reason except that he tastes grief with the very air he breathes, he remembers Lily's hand raised in farewell. He swallows and—fuck, there's blood.

He almost spits, but when he touches his lips they're dry. False alarm. He mustn't lose his head. He must find Potter. He promised—well, what isn't exactly clear. But he'll worry about it later.

Careful to meet no one's eye, Severus picks his way across the room. He navigates the tables at an unsteady clip, convinced that everything about him screams who he is, black boots, lank hair, the smell of blood on his long black robes. Yes, there, that's where he sat as headmaster, and before that, for more years than he cares to remember, professor. That was his life: isolated, nervewracking, absurd, tracking bitterness and futility like basilisk venom all over the castle.

Really, the only word for the kind of life he'd led is 'maudlin,' and he'd scorn it if—well, if they'd lost. If it had all been in vain.

It wasn't, and the evidence is plain for Severus to see, even if he still doesn't trust it. Despite the devastation of lives—"children's lives," Albus whispers in memory—most of the world is still here, most of the students did survive and can go on despite their loss of innocence.

Severus wishes that were enough, but it's not. He looks up, praying, _aching_ for stars, but no. The ceiling's choked and swirled, in defiance of the cloudless night outside.

He lowers his head, already knowing what he'll see. Lined up on their backs, with their feet sticking toward him. Lopsided. Reproachful.

Horrifying that feet alone can be so expressive.

Feeling sweat gather under his robes, he strengthens his glamour, glares down at his pale hands, concentrates on his heartbeat until his head is booming with it, tells himself he's alive. Alive. For what purpose doesn't matter now. He takes a step, then another, and by this simple expedient gets his arse over to where the dead are laid out. He's unable to control his telltale scowl, as if threatening detention to anyone who'd dare prevent him paying his respects.

With every fibre of his being he hates having to do this. He generally hates what his life demands of him, and this is no exception. But look he must, and look he will.

A Weasley's down. That's the only explanation for the huddled mass of ginger hair further up the row. He counts six bent heads, then risks a glance at the fallen figure. He knows in his bones who it has to be, if only because of the boy sitting with one hand wrapped around the stiff claw of his brother, the other clenched in his hair as if to keep his sanity from escaping. From this angle it's impossible to tell whether the grieving boy or the dead twin is missing an ear, and if he stares too long people will start to wonder.

One of the six has bushy brown hair, and he realises that the Weasley chit isn't with her family. This gives him an inkling of where Potter might be. The pride of Gryffindor isn't amongst the bodies, and neither is the girl. Again—he's beginning to hate this—that unwelcome relief shudders through him. He wishes Albus were here so he could point out how deplorably obvious it is that the kindest thing would have been to let Severus stay dead and leave the Potter brat to go on about his business.

Irked, he twitches this thought off, as if dislodging the bite of a Cornish pixie. The slightest breath of self-pity makes him gag.

As he paces up the row, pausing here and there for a closer look at the stark faces, at the dead students he'd done his best to bully and protect, he flicks a wary eye at the antechamber where two Aurors stand guard. They pay him no mind.

Just inside the partly-open doorway, a shrouded figure lies concealed under a full-length robe.

Nothing in his view identifies the corpse, but Severus's head sings with sudden high-pitched fury, his teeth clench, and the tension in his left arm nearly wrings a cry out of him. For one dangerous second he lurches between the urge to sink to his knees, arms clamped to his aching chest, bellowing, no, _braying_ with deranged laughter, and the incandescent rage that wants to whirl him across the room, knock the guards aside, and stand over Tom Riddle's body, blasting and pulverising and burning without mercy, until not even a handful of ashes remains for the house elves to sweep off the floor.

Shuddering with the effort of self-control, he swallows bile and forces himself to look away.

Right into the dead face of Remus Lupin.

The shock is so unexpected that Severus almost drops his wand. He stands paralysed, utterly taken aback, listening to the faint throbbing in his ears as his revived heart pumps blood through his body.

Lupin dead. The last Marauder, dead. How is this possible? Severus wipes the corners of his mouth. The touch of his own calloused fingers on his fevered skin is repellent. He can discern nothing of the werewolf's final moments in the rigid, gaping face, no clue to his emotions before violent death locked and stiffened his limbs.

He edges closer, his mind swimming between past and present. Potter. Black. Pettigrew. Now the last hold-out amongst his erstwhile tormentors lies before him, ready for burial, trousers rumpled and coat unevenly buttoned, face sandpapery, as if to say _See what this leads to? See what you've done?_

Fucking hell.

Feeling that some response is called for, he reaches out and curls one hand around Lupin's left foot. It's like fondling a block of wood. Faint, disoriented tremors pass like rainfall down his robes. Whatever this is, it isn't triumph or contempt. It's more like nausea.

_Serves you right_. The old, vicious gloating is the barest wisp of smoke.

To have sacrificed everything and still feel so disgraced, the unloved stepchild sent forth on false pretences into the dark forest—no, more like the boy sent home over the hols when that's the last place he wants to go—home to bloody _nothing_—when even his childhood enemies are giving up the ghost—

It doesn't add up. It never will. He's not cut out for forgiveness. His darkest desires are too centrifugal to his soul, obsessively pulling at him. Albus floats beyond reach, Lily spurns him as a monster—a convenient one, but a monster nonetheless—and here he stands, gripping the foot—the untransformed paw—of a dead werewolf, who would have done them all a favour in their fifth year if he'd just gone ahead and ripped out the throat of one weedy, grievance-riddled Slytherin. Imagine, Severus thinks, how much might have been prevented if he'd only died _then_.

Eyes intent on the greyish face, he pinches Lupin's big toe through the worn shoe leather, as if spite might startle a response out of him. No such luck. He yanks his hand away and wipes it on his robes.

To still his ridiculous trembling, he gouges two fingers along the patch of scar tissue at his throat. It works; his body goes rigid. He scowls down at Lupin, at the ragdoll figure of Nymphadora Tonks arranged beside him, at their hands placed in simulated peace upon their breasts. Wedding rings glint below their bent and swollen knuckles.

How fucking unreal this all is.

Because it's over. Taking a deep breath, Severus glances around, seeing former students, former classmates, Order members, Ministry underlings. He envies the centaur sleeping in the corner, where the shadows lie thick and dusty as curtains. Petty quarrels, deep hatreds, everything he's gnawed at for years in a feverish attempt to free himself. All over. The squandered love. Everything that's kept him trapped.

He's chewed the bone through. The consequences of his hideous, unfixable mistake are ranked before him, and his only way out is to walk over the bodies.

The problem being that he has no idea where to go.

The knowledge empties through him in a stomach-turning descent: he doesn't belong here anymore.

Severus waits for the sudden impact, the bone-jarring crunch. Nothing. His mouth goes dry, but that's it. Stiff-backed, he approaches the far end of the nearest table, summons a pitcher, gives the contents a hasty sniff, then transfigures a broken tallow into a goblet. He pours himself a splash of pumpkin juice and tosses it back in full view of the entire room. No one even looks up.

Damn it. He thunks the goblet down and transfigures it back, but the wax ends up melted all over the wooden surface. If Dumbledore were here, Severus would already be _doing_ something. It doesn't matter what, but something. Most likely snarling under his breath, but he'd be taking care of whatever Albus decreed was immediate, important, in dire need of his expertise.

There's no Dumbledore—no one, anymore, to tell him what to do.

Fuming at this exasperating recurrence of self-pity and wishing he had someone else to take it out on, Severus sweeps his gaze up and down the bridge of bodies. His past and his future are connected here, and he hasn't the first clue where they're leading.

Bugger this. He's like a vulture picking at his own liver. It's evident Potter's not in the room, so he's free to go. Anywhere at all would be better than here, with weeping Weasleys and the rigour mortis-afflicted corpses of children and monsters all mixed up together and—

It hits him. The impact. Fuck. _Fuck_. Two steps from the bier, Severus whirls around again, brought up short by the realisation slamming through him.

_I'm not there_.

It's bone-rattling, a totally lunatic thought. He can't help it. They didn't—he's not—they didn't even bloody fucking _honour_ him enough to fetch his body from the Shack and lay it to rest with the other casualties of war. There was time, surely. Before Fawkes arrived. Time enough to find and recover every other dead witch, wizard, mangled lifeless child—

Ignoring how mad and obsessed he sounds even in his own head, Severus shoots an appalled look at those nearest him. For Merlin's sake. Perhaps he deserved to die, he's not disputing that. Yes, of course, his crimes speak desperately against him. But is that any reason to leave him to rot, when even the Dark Lord lies decently concealed under a shroud?

The room blurs, as if the mist he saw in death has leaked into the mortal world. For an instant, hatred strips his veins. Like venom from the serpent, it fills him body and soul. Only this time he's not dying. On the contrary, he shakes with grotesque power. The desolate, bewildering rage is exactly like waking up in the Shack, soaked in blood and screaming at the blaze of phoenix feathers.

Because it fucking _hurts_, and in self-defence he indulges in hating everything and everyone who doesn't give a crup's arse about his fate.

_No one came for him_. It's that simple. He doesn't even rank being carted out with the rubbish.

Glowering out over the tables, he draws his wand from his pocket and smoothes it between his fingers. He's mimicking the Dark Lord's mannerism, the restless, sadistic toying with his wand that was a sign of Voldemort in the mood to play, to tease and torture and not let up until his victim's body lay twitching at his feet.

Severus has been on the receiving end of that masturbation by proxy and is sorely tempted to commit the same sin. He knows how much agony a complete disdain for one's fellow creatures can breed. All he has to do is drop his disguise and take down five or six of the self-absorbed wretches before they can gather their wits to retaliate. If he's lucky, the mere sight of him, not to mention the horror of a surprise attack, will bypass their scruples and scare an _Avada Kedavra_ out of one of their pathetic lot.

All it takes is one. A suicidal gesture emphatic enough to prove, even to the greatest fucking wizard of the age, that redemption is a waste of time. Wasted on _him_. Certainly everyone else seems to think so.

Fuck this. Pressure drums in his head, and he tamps a lid down on the irrational urge to go out in a bloodbath of hurt feelings. It helps that he's still gazing at Lupin, at Tonks, at the body of the diminutive Muggleborn boy who used to harass Potter all over the castle, waving his camera like a mute declaration of love. He didn't save them, and in a sense it's their blood that now flows through his veins. Why else would it burn so? He remembers the splash of phoenix tears, and in the midst of his rage thinks with dry, distant clarity: _The phoenix egg. I must search the ashes before anybody else finds it_.

He's not reasoning, not lucid, not really himself. He should cut his losses and run.

Betrayal festering inside him, he puts his tantrum under wraps and tucks away his wand. It doesn't escape his notice that several people to either side remove their hands from their sleeves. Still, no one recognises him. He's not even sure he recognises himself. He swivels on a boot heel and bestows one final, blistering glare upon the antechamber, just to reassure himself that not a muscle of the Dark Lord's swaddled corpse has moved. He still believes complete and merciless immolation would be safest, not even random molecules left behind to silt the cracks in the pavingstones.

On the way out, he ricochets with uncouth clumsiness off the corner of a table, chagrined that his hard-won grace has chosen this moment to desert him. It took him years to overcome his adolescent slouch, years to learn the fine art of terrorising students through body language alone.

Not particularly caring if he's spotted or bespelled, Severus stalks out the door.

Stairs. Here we go. Climb past the shattered masonry. Gaping holes puncture the balustrades, yawning over a drop that gets steeper with each change of staircase. Ah, yes, just as he expected, a series of sticky red stains. He won't tolerate the drip of blood on the risers. _Scourgify_. Look, there's more. Vanish them and pass on. Search the classrooms, the dormitories. Given the youngest Weasley's coincidental disappearance, pay extra attention to the unmade beds.

Just keep going. Get to the end of this. Potter's friends are still in the castle; he's not bloody likely to have ditched _them_, is he? Little arsehole's bound to be somewhere about.

Paranoid to a fault, Severus has schooled himself to use self-sustaining spells to compensate for momentary lapses of control. He's erred in the past and will err again. Thus his concealment charms continue to deflect startled glances even as he swoops by, muttering under his breath. They don't like it, they can kiss his raggedy white arse. Making the reckless jump from the south-wing staircase to one wheeling in the direction he needs to go, he lands hard, catches his infirm balance on the steps, and wonders what gutter that last thought crawled out of. The abuse-strewn streets of his childhood, most like. His arse _had_ been raggedy, the wages of mismatched parents and charity-shop togs.

The damaged staircase swings at such a speed that it lifts two banners of hair over his cheekbones. More and more his thoughts deteriorate into a war zone, full of collisions and crash lights and mental cauldron bubbles. He takes the set of stairs two at a time, half-tempted to storm into the headmaster's office and have it out with Albus's portrait. He could do with a spot of name-calling just now, maybe the shattering of an irreplaceable magical artefact or two. But no doubt the gargoyle password's been changed (and if not, why not?). For that matter, he has no wish to encounter Minerva and plead his case, not now, not ever. What would he say? He hasn't a clue. If there's one thing he's learned from his near-death experience, it's that "sorry" is only a conjuring trick. Its aim is emotional Disillusionment: to hide the truth behind a flimsy, shimmering curtain.

There _is_ no magic word that spells forgiveness. One might as well babble nonsense syllables. He has Lily Evans Potter to thank for rubbing his nose in that demoralising fact.

Blood. Smoke. His wand hand twitches, twitches again.

The stone corridors he stalks through veer like empty tunnels through dead silence, perforated by the night-time glaze of windows. Stopping once, Severus angles his forehead against the cold glass, squinting out at the stars. Dizzying eternity twinkles like a net around his mind, closing in.

Jerking back, he stumbles over nothing and barks the heels of one hand against the smoke-damaged wall.

His palm comes away black. Skin crawling, he thinks of Lily, sees Lupin's gaunt face, the hint of dry, dead teeth and the outline of his skull.

He licks one smeared finger. It tastes like a frying pan. Burnt blood, he expects. Grimacing, he scrapes his tongue against his teeth and spits the Dark mouthful onto the floor.

Speaking of being dead. He mustn't rampage around like this. For fuck's sake, he _died_. He needs to stay calm. He needs to eat first. He needs to—

Find Potter.

"Headmaster? Headmaster Professor Snape, sir?"

Heart expanding like an air-filled balloon, Severus spins, wand on target.

One of the elves he recognises as loyal to Slytherin House stares up at him in astonishment. "Headmaster! You is alive! Oh, _sir_. We is rejoicing at this news!"

Severus' cheek muscles knot shut, his jawbone throbbing as if broken. Alarmed by his expression, the elf falls silent and cringes backward like a child anticipating a beating. With effort, Severus unclenches his jaw and tries to breathe himself down to a reasonable level of discourse. _We is rejoicing_. One house elf in all the world. One indebted creature whose duty it is to grovel and feign delight. The crushing pain in his chest spreads outward; his entire torso aches as if Nagini were wrapped invisibly around him, coils tightening.

"Be still," he snaps before the elf can hurl itself apologetically at the wall. "Pay attention. I don't have time or patience to explain myself." He pauses again, forcing down the rabid dog of his temper. "Tell no one, do you hear? Not even your fellow elves. My survival this night is an absolute secret. No one else must know."

The elf stands straight, eyes luminous in the darkness.

Severus lowers his wand. "I entrust you with this secret."

"But Headmaster Professor— "

"I will shortly be leaving the castle," Severus says, wishing he could do so this very moment. "It is in everyone's best interests that I—that the world think me dead." The reminder that he _was_ dead stops him for a moment. "I've only come back to— "

There's no intelligent way to end that sentence. He can't bring himself to divulge his ridiculous task. "To be sure there's nothing more I can do. Once I'm satisfied Hogwarts is safe, my part in this disaster is finished."

The elf's forehead corrugates. "The students, Headmaster Professor. You is forgetting your students. The Slytherins is needing a voice to defend them— "

"Not mine," Severus snaps. It's pathetic and infuriating that a house elf is perhaps the only creature in the entire castle concerned for the children unlucky enough to be stuck in Voldemort's house. His own presence certainly won't help. Clearly baffled, the elf puckers its face at him. He says flatly, "I can't. Leave it at that. Now swear to me. Swear you won't say that you've seen me alive."

"I is swearing, Headmaster Professor Snape, sir."

Severus waits for it to go away, but the idiot just stands there staring at him raptly. About to order it out of his sight, he changes his mind and digs inside his breast pocket.

"Take this," he says and drops a square of white fabric into the outstretched, knobbly hands.

Cautiously the elf picks open the plain cambric handkerchief that Severus has carried about with him for years. Ever since he started earning enough to afford such social pretensions, in fact. He doesn't need it anymore. He never had the chance to offer it to Lily, and it's obvious he never will. He's carried it as a talisman all this time, but he's a dead man, not a courtly knight, and besides, Lily never actually gave him this token to remember her by. It doesn't count if the knight merely skulks about waiting to wave his emblem of failed love in his lady's face.

"You're free," he says, meaning it for both of them. This is one memory, one aspiration toward gentility, he need never bother with again.

"I isn't— " stammers the elf, beginning to shake. "I doesn't— "

"You served the dungeons," Severus interrupts before it can launch into full-blown wailing. "You've been loyal to my Slytherins, have you not?" The elf nods, ears drooping, its expression a little wild. "Then stop quaking like a jelly and behave like a member of my house. I'm no longer headmaster, but I've not yet been replaced. You have a rare opportunity. Stay if you wish to help. Go if you prefer to seek other employment. And keep that," his lips quirk, "in memory of me."

Blubbering a little, the elf clutches the handkerchief as Severus turns away, heading for Gryffindor Tower. When he looks back, the creature has, thankfully, taken the hint and gone.

He should go, too. Words cannot express how much he doesn't want to be here. Compulsively he runs his fingers through his hair, taking comfort in its heavy, oily texture. Blast. If he'd had the least presence of mind, he could have ordered the little busybody to bring him something to eat.

The lure of the dungeons tugs at him. What an inconceivable luxury it would be to stretch out on his old bed, in his old room, and fall asleep. Oh God, for a thousand days. Over the past year he's subsisted on four hours' shut-eye a night, cups of boiled coffee and overbrewed tea, Pepper-Up Potion, and the adrenalin jitters caused by repeatedly suppressing the urge to Transfigure certain members of his staff into cockroaches so that he might have the supreme pleasure of crunching them underfoot.

Working for the Light, Severus has learned, doesn't lessen one's reliance on fantasies of retribution.

Gryffindor Tower is muffled in darkness, sharp with wind. Broken panes pockmark half the windows. The smell hits him first: oil of juniper berries, burnt silk, curdled vomit. In the Common Room, lion-footed chairs and up-ended sofas are piled atop one another, upholstery glowing velvet red through the shadows. The ornate sideboard is flung facedown, the detritus crammed inside it by carefree teenagers—half-eaten Cockroach Clusters, crinkled homework, snapped quills, tins of wand wax, a smashed pair of extendable ears—strewn across a carpet scabby with hex marks. Paintings hang lopsided, and when Severus casts Lumos to scout the corners, the icy gleam and sparkle of broken glass warn him to tread carefully.

From the fireplace straggle cheerless strings of smoke, where gold-and-crimson tapestries torn from the walls sit bundled, partly burned, sporting charred patches like some horrible cindery plague. The way the colours flicker and the embroidered figures twist, trapped in the bulging folds, Severus is reminded of the iridescence that surrounded him in death.

Faint squeaky pleas for help emanate from the singed arras. He circles the room once, scanning and poking, then with an abrupt Levitation spell heaves the bulky pile out of the firepit. It drops to the floor with a whump of scattered ash. A curt flick of his wand unrolls the layers, and another flick douses the embers. Weak cheers of gratitude whisper up from the scorched cloth.

Sneering, Severus walks away.

A shutter creaks like a rook's call. The rush of wind in the Forbidden Forest breathes through his memory, the starlight braided in the phoenix song. He pauses in the darkness, straining to detect any presence but his own. Potter? Doubtful. It's too depressing here. Purse-lipped, he glides from the boys' dorm (beds stripped to mattress ticking and shoved against the walls, moonlight in pale lozenges on the stone floor) to the girls'. He whispers the length of the room and out again. His boots are custom-made Nargle-hide, which is one reason his footsteps can barely be heard.

About to quit the tower, he gives the vandalism one final glance and feels only contempt. How fragile life is. Nothing lasts. The work of wizarding hands can be undone in a day.

He thinks—never stops thinking—of that Dark-infested cadaver down below, lying up for grabs under the mingiest possible guard.

Idiots. He huffs a humourless laugh. After all, if _he_ can be resurrected on the whim of some old tosser with a messiah complex, what's to prevent Tom Riddle from doing the same?

He checks the other Houses purely for form's sake. More chaos, more ruin, but no trace of Lily's son. Battered students lie passed out on sofas or sit quietly together, faces in hands. Without a word, Severus turns from the threshold.

The owlery next. His legs are tired, but he toils upward. The dry stench of owl fewmets helps to clear his head. This high up, the wind sighs and scrapes, a shock of ozone, leaf mould, and freezing lake water. The sky glimmers overhead, a polished black crystal. He keeps his gaze stubbornly cast down, conscious of starlight pricking along his back.

Yellow glares wax and wane in a lunar cycle of owl eyes, but no seventh-year Gryffindor skulks within. Severus didn't really think there would be—who'd want to sit ankle-deep in birdshit, after all? But this is Potter, so it's not beyond imagining.

Air shrieks around the turrets. In a flap of robes and clacking boot heels, he descends again, glowing with cold, and then uses the invigorating tingle of circulation to flog himself back up to the Astronomy Tower. With a mercury-silver flare of light, he illuminates the parapet he still faces in nightmares, and then scarpers back down the steps, breathing hard.

Where the bloody hell is bloody Potter?

He can't bring himself to go down to the kitchens. He'd be mobbed by every house elf in Hogwarts if he dared. Bad enough to die of snakebite. He has no wish to suffer an even more ignoble death by kitchen implement.

Finally, having delayed the inevitable until there's nowhere else to go, he heads for the infirmary. By the time he gets there, he's stumbling with fatigue. He knows he's borrowing trouble by refusing to feed his exhausted body, but the only hunger gripping him is the compulsion to see, no, _feel_ Potter in his grasp. Just like some hero-worshipping idiot who crawls on all fours up to the pedestal, longing for a chance to kiss the brat's sainted toe through his grubby trainers. It's gone beyond the point where a mere glimpse will suffice. He won't feel grounded again, real and sane and scoured clean of stupid fancies, until he's laid eyes—hands—on the dratted boy.

It's insane. The last thing Severus wants is to face the consequences of Potter having watched him die, to read in the boy's eyes the knowledge instilled by those blasted memories. The fact that Potter _knows_ eats at him like a canker sore. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

But once he finds him—aware of the ghostly onlookers keeping score—Severus intends to shove his pride into a ditch and say to the Boy Who Died to Live Again what he couldn't say to Lily.

He just hopes he doesn't choke on the words. He appreciates irony—and a good thing, too, considering he wades in it up to his neck—but there's such a thing as eating too much crow.

The brat's not in the infirmary.

At first he doesn't believe it. He makes a circuit of the beds, concentrating so hard on Disillusioning his presence that the room's occupants sniffle vaguely at the passing shadow. Some part of Severus's mind wonders when it happened that he grew powerful enough to render himself virtually invisible, an insubstantial darkness instead of a presence. He supposes crossing over into death might account for it.

It certainly fits his current status in the wizarding world: a hard-to-place, ephemeral interruption of the light.

No sign of Potter. How can that be? Candles waver at every bedside, kissing the wounded to sleep. Children doze with their mouths ajar. Their gilded eyelids twitch. The air in the room reeks of green astringent potions, the faintest traces of blood and urine, chamomile draughts, fever poultices, tea and toast.

Tea. That gets through to him. Severus tracks the fragrance to Poppy's office, where he stands fixated on the self-replenishing tea urn until she's called away.

He's almost tempted to reveal himself as Poppy knocks back a bottle of Pepper-Up, grimaces through the steam, covers one ear and coaxes the last wisp out, muttering to herself, "Steady on, old girl. Here we go."

His hand, hovering near her, falls. Like a child reprimanded for being too forward and not waiting his turn, Severus plaits his fingers behind his back and stands aside. As soon as she leaves, he pounces on her tea service like a starving ghoul.

Three rejuvenating cups later, he slinks back onto the ward.

Caffeinated to the gills but with some measure of his former grace restored, he avoids all contact in the infirmary, adroitly dodging the healers who crisscross the floor casting diagnostic spells. In the last bed in the row nearest the exit, a student lies suspended horizontal to the mattress, sixty percent of her naked body mottled with burns. Black and flaky, their red centres seep.

Severus rolls the stem of his wand back and forth for a long moment but in the end simply lowers it and plunges from the room. He can extinguish a tapestry, but he can't quench the fire in a burn curse.

He wants Potter, damn it, and he wants him _now_. He won't be able to rest until the boy is in his grasp.

Finally, exhausted and unable to face starting all over again, he sinks into a window seat and stares blankly at the floor. He pretends he's pondering what to do next, but in reality he's obsessing, with a perplexity bordering on despair, on the stupidity of this new lease on life. So far, resurrection has been nothing but a series of swift, pointy-toed kicks in the arse. The futility of his own existence, his sheer _irrelevance_ to the postwar world, couldn't be plainer.

Why the hell did Albus send him back? The old bugger's parting words—"Don't believe for a moment that this is meant to punish you"—rang with a perfectly hideous sincerity. But that was then, in death. This is now, in—well, God knows Hell on earth is a thriving real estate business, and he should have guessed Albus would own shares. Severus' philosophy of teaching has made him something of an expert in the lowly arts of detention, and he rather suspects that Albus is plotting to give him a sly Dumbledorean taste of his own medicine.

Maybe this is the metaphysical equivalent of scrubbing cauldrons every night for an entire seven years of term. No, that's too kind: of writing a million times across his heart with a flesh-eating quill, "I shall not kill my friends. I shall not kill my friends. I shall not— "

The flaming torch across the hall snaps and streams sideways in a passing draft. Shadows slither in the joins between stone blocks, creating the illusion that the ancient grey walls hide a colony of secret, scuttling things.

He's still silently tongue-lashing himself to stop moping about and get on with it, when a lone set of footsteps jerks him out of his sulk.

Checking to be sure his web of spells is holding, he waits tautly as a young witch clip-clops down the hall, her wand arm swinging back and forth when it should be raised at casting angle. _Twenty points from Ravenclaw_, he snarls to himself, irritable out of all proportion to the offence. He could take the careless bint down with one strike. He's half-tempted to Body-Bind the imbecile and teach her a lesson in vigilance she'll never forget.

Wand hovering, he doesn't bother to speak until she comes abreast.

"Not so fast, Miss Catesby." Unfortunately for them, he remembers the names and faces of most of his students. "A word, if you please."

He pitches his voice low, calm and silky, a tactic that used to incite cold sweats in the classroom.

"I don't suppose you can tell me where Potter's gone off to." This time he swaddles the menace in satin bands, though his voice carries a mild compulsion charm that would be instantly detectable if the witless girl were paying attention.

"Oh," she says. "Harry—he needed time to—with Ginny—they went— " She scrunches her brow, finally exerting herself to stop the wagging of her own tongue.

Approving but in no position to show it, Severus dispels his Glamour, sheds his Disillusionment, and Legilimises her.

He plucks forth a blurry image of scruffy, singed Gryffindors and a snatch of slurred, eyebrow-raising conversation. Holding the abysmal memory at mind's length, he sifts through the babble.

The Room of Requirement. Of-bloody-course. He should have thought of that, if only because it's so glaringly obvious and provides the maximum possible inconvenience. Never let it be said that Harry fucking Potter has _ever_ cooperated.

"Thank you, Miss Catesby, that was … helpful," he drawls, meaning anything but. "And I realise there's no point in my saying this, but kindly exert yourself in future to take life-or-death matters more seriously. Meaning, for Merlin's sake, do _not_ lower your wand. Keep it raised at all times. You never know," his upper lip curls on cue, performing the job even though sneering is the last thing he feels like doing, "who or what might be lurking in the corridors."

Illyria Catesby dutifully adjusts her grip on the wand handle and takes half a step forward, never mind that the sane response would be to run as if all the Dark Lords in Hell were after her. She peers at him, a tinge of awe softening her face. Her free hand wavers as if debating whether or not to reach out, which is … not at all what Severus was expecting.

"Is that really—Professor? Professor Snape? Merlin, you've come back!" And then she—good God, did the whole world go mad during his brief demise? The silly cow _smiles_ at him, tremulous and swallowing in a stupidly emotional way. "Wait till I tell Harry!"

Severus stares at her, nonplussed, and to his alarm those sodding coils tighten in his chest. He's astonished to be _seen_, and it rattles him—as so much else has recently, but here it's like being welcomed home, and he can't remember the last time that happened. This girl sees him. Therefore he exists. It's ridiculous to feel gratitude to a below-average Ravenclaw who survived the battle through the randomness of luck alone (since it's abundantly clear that her sense of self-preservation isn't up to snuff) simply because she _recognises_ him. Who could have predicted it would matter so much?

Her next question is just as unsettling. "Are you—Harry said you—Professor, please don't hex me, but are you all right?"

Severus sits in the window seat like a ruffled crow, affronted by her concern. She's a child, and she's alive, and for reasons beyond his comprehension she's asking after his welfare. For a moment he can scarcely credit it. She's one of those he helped save, so why does it feel as though, for this one small kindness, he owes her?

Scrutinising her closely, he rises to his feet. She backs away two steps but stands her ground, and he replies, quite gently for him, "Yes, thank you, Miss Catesby. I am as I've always been." It strikes him that even this might no longer be true. The possibility makes him smile, and for once he means the twist of his lips to _be_ a smile, even though the sight of it will no doubt scare five years off her life. It also means that she's staring at his face and not his wand when he gives it one delicate flick. "_Obliviate_."

He's several yards down the corridor before he risks a glance back. Illyria Catesby is just turning from the window, moving with the tentative precision of the utterly bewildered. As he watches, shrouded in spells, she jerks her wand into position and takes a step, then another, careful and quiet, her body language newly alert. She picks up speed as she walks onward, wand swivelling when the torches sputter. Her footsteps barely echo.

_Ten points to Ravenclaw_, Severus thinks with satisfaction, and then, twitchy from years of obeying the wards, Apparates through their absence to the seventh floor.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Blackness and silence, smoked rock and cracked ceiling close him in like a railway tunnel. He's back in that hallway, blood boiled to soot on the stonework. Buggering hell. Outside every window, the night sky tempts him, a dwindling line of star-flecked eyes too far away to help.

Peering about, Severus pulls the shreds of his nerves together as if tightening a frayed-thin cloak. Those fools came _here_ to get away from the Great Hall? Wind whistles past a cracked pane, a desolate sound in the darkness. He prefers the chill to the inferno that must have battered its way through here several hours ago. Potter's mad or desperate to retreat into this gutted corridor for solace. It's like holing up in a crematorium. Even the owlery would have made more sense.

Right. Now he comes to it. How to persuade the blasted Room to let him in. He studies the stretch of ruined wall and curses his luck. Behind it lie two young lovers with an overpowering desire to be left alone, curled up together in a consoling fantasy. If Potter only knew who was seeking them, the boy would even now be calling upon his favoured-son status to ensure the very stones conspired against him.

The area is so ravaged that Severus can only hope he's remembering correctly, that it's really the same mute patch of rock into which he once conjured a door. As the youngest professor on staff, he'd treated it as his bolthole. When he could not endure one minute more of the Headmaster's maddening omniscience or the nosey-parker cheek of his fellow staff members, when the impulse to demonstrate his profound grasp of the hex spectrum had grown overpowering—Merlin, they'd thought his tongue was rude, they had _no idea_ how many curses he'd swallowed—he used to sneak up to this spot and vanish.

Bringing all his obstinacy to bear, he strides back and forth three times. It doesn't work. Of course it doesn't. Focussing, he tries a second time. Nothing. Fuck it. He wants this finished. He doesn't know whether seeing Potter will make him feel less driven, but it's the only thing he can think to do.

Starting again, he marshalls his thoughts, although he knows it's a dead loss. It doesn't work that way. Still, he argues. Insists. Paces. Persuades. Bites his tongue to control his temper. Harangues in silence. Shakes with the hammer-blows of his banging heart, begging, _I need this. To do this. For God's sake, let me in_. He chokes with fury and repeats himself. His robes billow and tangle around his boots as he turns too sharply, turns again, like a caged hippogriff in a Muggle sideshow.

Finally he flings up his wand arm to crack the stupid wall apart, then whirls away in the same second, panting with defeat, the curse unspoken.

What's the point? The door won't yield. He knows that already. Just as he knows what it will most likely take to gain entry, and how despicable it is for Albus to force this upon him. He'll be sorry. They will all be sorry. He stands staring down the slender, quivering length of his wand and wonders what would happen if he Disapparated away, to the ends of the earth, turning his back on Hogwarts, on his past. Most of all on the boy inside that room.

Eyes closed, Severus drags one hand over his face. Covers his jutting nose, the hollows that have sunk into his cheeks over the past year. He should be dead. He shouldn't be in a position where anyone can humiliate him ever again. He doesn't understand what he's doing here. Love availed him nothing, that much is clear. It led to nothing but an early grave.

Well, he's alive and Voldemort isn't. That ought to count for something. But where's the merit in having outlasted the personification of everything vengeful and degenerate in his soul? Fuck God, fuck Merlin, fuck any deity who's even remotely responsible, there's something _wrong_ with that. Something so random, an incongruity so far beyond the realm of justice, that Severus can't confront the knowledge head-on but can only sneer at it sideways.

The Dark Lord doesn't know how fortunate he is. No one expects him to make reparations.

So be it. He will degrade himself again. He'll do whatever's necessary, although to what end he hasn't a clue. Let the outcome be on their heads. If they insist that the deepest of his desires, the most heretical and soul-sucking of his hungers be pressed into service, then he will not be alone in suffering the consequences.

They forget, he has no master now.

Drawing himself up, Severus takes a moment to arrange his robes, breathe warmth onto his cold fingers, sweep his arm in a wide arc and clean the worst of the filth from the wall. He walks to the corner, outwardly composes himself, shuts his eyes and, in one stroke of silent confession, reduces the burial ground of his honour to a smouldering crater.

Pay attention, Albus. Lily. Take heed, all ancient magic and common decency that have forbidden him the right to what he wants. Has he earned it? No, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter that it would destroy him. Ultimately, nothing matters, because _this_ is what he wants:

Potter.

Your son. Your weapon. Your golden boy.

He swallows, and feels hypocrisy shrivel, self-denial go up in flames. You asked for this. He would have kept—_did_ keep—this loathsome secret until the day he died. But they wouldn't let him go. They wouldn't let him die, and now they have to accept the consequences.

He wants Potter. Before God and the devil, he _wants_ him.

Without fuss, Severus makes the first pass along the wall, unswerving, stalking straight ahead. He's already scraped raw inside, shaking, half-convinced he's released a demonic force into the world. He can't believe he's admitted this. Now that it's out in the open, the passion travels his veins, rabid, irrational, a private Fiendfyre consuming everything in its path: all his lies, his grotesque self-restraint, all the desperate clinging to his worn, futile love for Lily Evans. It desecrates the memory to which he's dedicated his life. He turns and begins retracing his steps, acutely aware that Potter's on the other side of the wall, that only a layer of stone separates them, and that he's never laid a hand on the boy.

Never, except to push him away.

It's like drinking deep after a dry spell so endless, so infinitely barren, that he's accepted the numbness as a judgment. As normal. After thirsting for so long that he's forgotten the astonishment of water, the taste of truth bursts upon his tongue. He's quenched and at the same time inflamed. He presses his lips together, then bites them, then licks the bruised skin with a nervous, sensuous compulsion. His footsteps remain steady despite his certainty that the floor's quaking beneath him. It's like rain beating hard on an ash-strewn landscape, and Severus soaks it in, his muscles trembling with shock. His emotions, the bleakness of his desire, churn to a froth, muddy, contaminated. He longs to tip back his head, let the freedom of depravity run through him, down his skin, longs to surrender to delirium and let appetite leach the last dregs of humanity from his soul.

His sanity's still intact, so he does nothing of the sort, merely pivots on his heel and embarks on his last long-legged pass before the wall.

Harry Potter is everything Severus is not. That knowledge is there in his heartbeat, spelled out with the steady click of boot heels on stone. Potter's vulnerability, his persistence, his refusal to be broken, his slow flowering into something halfway beautiful, is like the lure of potions, simmered out of slime and sweetness, crushed organs and iridescent wings.

_Give him to me. Let me breathe the air he breathes. I burn with poison. Let me lay a hand on his skin and brand him with that burn. Let the touch of him be my cure. Give me something to remember before I quit him forever. And let me deliver his mother's promise of love in my own way, in my own voice_.

Severus stops, the black hallway teetering around him, his robes moulded to his calves by the suck of a random draft. Cool air skitters up his legs. He's breathing even harder than he had after his mad dash up to the Astronomy Tower, and he's alive to the push of his cock uncurling against his thigh, roused from hibernation by the stirring of blood and hope. He faces the wall, fiercely. His last secret's been pried out of him by magical means, a debt as ruthless as a crowbar, the vault cracked open and the furnace unleashed.

_Let me in_.

The door materialises. Severus' nostrils flare, and for a moment it's a fair bet he'll rupture like a vial of unstable Veritaserum. Instead he grabs hold of the knob and turns it, quelling his nerves. He's not made of Flitterbloom. He will not tremble in front of Harry bloody Potter.

As he steps inside, shadows flicker in his peripheral vision, glimpses of blackened vestiges and cracked, ravaged walls, a grim reality held back by the one unwavering illusion the Room employs all its power to sustain.

There's a bed. Of course there is. He'd known there would be, he just hadn't—stopped to consider what it might mean. Vast and soft, enveloped in a (nauseatingly unoriginal) red and gold counterpane, thick creamy pillows, and a tasselled canopy. He despises tassels. A bed, and tucked inside it a boy and a girl, the covers pulled up but not enough to hide their nakedness. A black-haired boy with glasses (not presently on his face) and a pale girl with long, tangled red hair. Both of them slender, unsullied, in love, and—

Fuck this, he's going to _kill_ something.

No. No, he's not. That's all behind him now. He stays by the door, and from a distance observes how they flail, shout, how they clutch the bedclothes, scramble upright into sitting positions. Shaking his head in contempt, he summons their wands and carelessly shoves them in a pocket. His charms, his spells, his shadowy elusiveness dissipate and leave him standing unveiled, the traitor, stained with invisible blood.

The girl shrieks at the boy, "You said he was _dead!_"

Her eyes are slightly puffy, pink with tears that have already been shed and soothed away. With kisses, no doubt. Severus wonders if Potter can really be that awful a lover, although losing one's virginity—assuming he's reading the signs right—does have a bloody lot in common with falling off a broom. It's collision-prone and ultimately bruising. Or it was for him.

Then a flash of memory incinerates his prurient speculations and reminds him of a deeper reason the girl has to cry: the Great Hall, ginger hair, a row of bodies, a huddled twin confronting the death of half his self, and he has to stifle a surge of—not guilt. He refuses to feel—

All right, yes, sod it. Guilt.

Like the romantic adolescents they are, they've been imbibing. A half-drained bottle of wine and two long-stemmed glasses wink every time the bedside candles flicker. Potter stares. Severus stares back. The boy's not afraid, and Severus has to admire the ridiculous cheek of a teenager caught wandless, bare-arsed, and virtually blind. But then, earlier this evening this singular child had crushed a ruthless and near-victorious Dark Lord. Severus lingers on that thought. Then he _Accios_ the (somewhat bent) spectacles and slips them down the same pocket into which he dropped their wands.

It's a foolish gesture, courting a downfall. Even before he died it was risky, but at this point looking into Potter's eyes is addictive.

Ginny Weasley scrambles for her robes, and Severus hits her with a whispered, "_Incarcerous_." He doesn't particularly want to deal with a half-naked, panicky student running through the hallways screaming about him having returned from the dead.

"Leave her alone!" Potter barks. The girl struggles, yelling for help, and calls Severus a slew of harmless, common room-level obscenities. He resists the sadistic impulse to smile. It's tempting; students hate it when he smiles. At least he's done her the courtesy of aiming the magical cords so that her modesty remains wrapped in blankets. Her flushed face is an alarming red, and it clashes with her hair and the bed hangings.

He remembers the girl in the infirmary, burnt almost to a crisp, and his amusement fades.

He focusses on Potter and takes a single step forward. The girl screams, "Harry, look out!"

"What do you want?" Potter snaps at him, and then, falling back on his mainstay, sheer idiocy, "What the hell are you, a ghost?"

It's the sort of utterly pathetic remark that Severus used to swat aside with disdainful relish, the way one might counter a first-year's attempt at a hex. This time he hesitates. In fact, he doesn't know what he is. He feels oddly insubstantial, much as he did in the woods outside the Shrieking Shack, his soul blazing up too close to the surface. Can Potter see through him to his phoenix-fire skeleton, the luminous hunger that threatens to leap out and burn them all to a crisp? It's a kind of power, this poison. Because of it, the Room of Requirement chose a Snape over a Potter. His need to violate is evidently stronger than the pangs of first love.

Nothing ghostly about it.

Or the other way around: Harry Potter and his red-haired girl are the ghosts, Severus' personal revenants, reminders of the horror that put him on this path. The words he couldn't take back. The life he never got a chance to lead.

It's infuriating. Not only has the boy survived, but he's being rewarded with everything Severus wanted at his age. It's the same triangle all over again, with Severus left out in the cold. How maddening to feel this helpless, when he's the one armed, in control. He wants so much, yet he's permitted none of it.

Potter looks puzzled, perhaps by the fact that Severus is just standing there. Soon they'll be thinking necromancy's at work. He's about to provide a compelling example of pissed-off wizardry, thereby offering proof he's alive, when Potter, as always, takes the matter out of his hands and does the worst possible thing he could do under the circumstances.

He throws back the covers, slides off the bed, and stands up, stupidly, valiantly naked.

Since childhood, Severus has been told off for his unnerving glare. His eyes burn, his lips tighten until they're bloodless, and his nose seems to grow larger, more hawklike, the skin stretched so tight that he sometimes thinks the bone might pierce through.

Fever possesses his face. Merlin forgive him. Look there, scarcely more than an arm's length away. _This_ is what he wants. This boy. Who is several pounds and two inches below average, not quite sexually mature, a gentle furring on his arms and legs, nothing on his chest, tanned on his face and forearms and otherwise pale. His cock is small but perfect. He confronts Severus, the spectre in the room, with owlish, nearsighted eyes.

Breathless, her words tumbling over each other, the girl cries, "Harry, what are you doing? Stay away from him! I don't care what anyone says, Snape's a— "

Severus flicks his wand. "_Silencio_." This is between him and Potter, and for his current purposes Ginevra Weasley is little more than background noise. He'll not countenance her imposing herself as a distraction. Soon enough, she'll have what she wants. What _he_ wants.

Potter turns his head and takes in the sight of his girlfriend mouthing silent curses and struggling against her bonds. He starts toward her, but Severus flashes his wand in a snide "ah-ah" gesture. Potter freezes, then slowly faces forward again, hands raised, wary. He's got wrinkled, cushiony bollocks, wobbling now, the knob of his pinkish-grey cock swinging on top of them. His narrow thighs are muscled from the hours he's spent gripping broomsticks between them.

"What's this about, Snape? I thought you were— Right, so you're obviously not dead. Congratulations." Potter licks one corner of his mouth, the only evidence that he might be nervous. He doesn't say 'welcome back.' He doesn't even ask how it's possible. No, it's simply, "What do you want from me?"

The irony, under the circumstances, cuts deeper than ever. Say rather, what _doesn't_ he want? The answer is, has always been: _everything I can't have._ This, for example. Severus will never have this. He'll never have Potter. Just as Lily was never going to be his. The yearning is always so bloody one-sided. He has no idea what he's going to do once he leaves Hogwarts, beyond vowing never to come back.

God damn it, there's _nothing_ he wants, either here or in the wider world. The one thing he wants is precisely what he cannot have, and even if he could, it's not a reason for living. It's not the answer to why he has to do this all over again.

He tells himself to be calm, calm, that he's almost there, his task almost fulfilled. The fact that he's shuddering with rebellion and greed is entirely beside the point. He takes another step toward his naked adversary, his naked desire, the susurrus of his robes and the deliberate tap-click of his boot the only sounds in the room. Not quite: there's the spit of hot wick in molten wax, the panting of the outraged, terrified girl. Severus masters his body as he locks eyes with Potter, remembering how he bled out into the boy's hands, how the loss of his memories tormented him as much as the loss of his life. The poison kindled by having Potter at his mercy races through his veins in a frantic tirade, inscribed in fire.

_You did it. You're alive. Thank you for not dying. Fuck you for not coming back for me. I'm alive but I'm lost and I don't know what to do. And you're alive and in love, and you're a hero and you're young and I'm not anymore and you can so easily have everything I missed out on, everything I'll never have_.

He opens his mouth to tell Potter none of this, to give him only Lily's profession of love. He's obliged to say just that and no more. Instead, even though it's absurd, even though it reveals too much, a furious snarl rises to his lips, and he can't help it, he says out loud: "You ungrateful little fuck, you _left me there_."

The boy stares at him. The room is absolutely silent. Not a sound, save for a terrible ringing in his ears. For all that he practically spat the words, nothing came out. His lips moved—Potter's frowning at his mouth—but it was all pantomime. Nothing.

Silenced.

Heart sinking, Severus tries again, but he already knows it's pointless. There's no mistaking what this means. He's been made a fool of once more. Lily is protecting her son, exactly as she protected herself. Severus Snape is apparently deemed not worthy to speak to Harry Potter, despite having sacrificed his life so that the boy might rise again in victory. And despite having been under the impression that he was condemned to rebirth for expressly this purpose: as the messenger of Lily Potter's love from beyond the grave.

It's too much. With a single stride he has Potter in his grasp—from the corner of his eye he sees the girl on the bed thrash about—and he grips the boy's upper arm with such intensity, such rage, that if it had been Potter's throat he would have crushed his windpipe. As it is, there will be bruises, and he's glad. He wants to shout at the indignity, the unfairness, but he's afraid only spittle will fly. The boy stumbles, but Severus pulls him close and stares into Potter's unflinching face, his stubborn mouth, his eyes hard and hateful. This is what he saw as he was dying. This was the face that glowed above him in his agony and terror, this was the body that for months he'd guarded in his fantasies, barely touching in the secrecy of his mind. When that touch was finally granted, it turned out to be a clawing, clinging affair, spattered with blood and the bitter knowledge that his memories sentenced Potter to death.

Severus can't pinpoint when he first became aware that he was sexually obsessed with Harry Potter, because it emerged naturally, or unnaturally, from the violent obsession that already existed. His long fingers, twisted around the soft skin and slender muscle of Potter's arm, clench with such punishing strength because he fears that otherwise his hand will get away from him, start mapping this supple, forbidden territory, taking what doesn't belong to him.

There is nothing for him here. He looks hard into Potter's eyes, green and utterly uncomprehending, and thinks, near despair, hating himself for being so childish, _Why didn't you come back for me?_

He swears he hasn't used Legilimency, but Potter's eyes startle wide and the refusal in his face softens. Lily's words echo across the distance between life and death, like an Imperius curse: "When you see Harry again, please give him our love."

The ghost of her tenderness gathers in his mouth. Severus does his best, but it escapes unspoken. Unspeakable.

He lowers his head. He can't manage even this. His impurity apparently defiles the sentiment itself. He's prevented from saying anything to Potter, words of gratitude or accusation, love or hate. He won't find forgiveness here, can't ask for it, offer it, can't yell or disembowel with a single turn of phrase or—Merlin, is it so much to ask?—confess his part in Albus' plans. Everything's denied him, everything, even the kind of resolution between himself and this boy that will allow Severus to walk away clean. Or as clean as someone in his condition can ever be.

He bends further, as if an invisible hand is forcing his head down, and the most delicate layer of his skin touches Potter's. Surely he can breathe the knowledge into him, move his lips to speak the words and feel them take shape in Potter's mouth. Once he finishes, the boy will be free to repeat them to his heart's content, a charm of comfort, of eternal childhood.

He didn't come here intending to touch Potter. Or if he had any intent, it was to push him away. This isn't a kiss, because Severus isn't good at kissing. He's out of practise. To hell with that. He was never _in_ practise. It's been years since he put his mouth to any better use than flinging curses or cruel witticisms. If the stupid boy hadn't left his own mouth open, there would be no reason for any of this to involve tongues.

And yet the next second he pushes his tongue past Harry Potter's lips, inside them, between his teeth, into the slick, deep pocket of his cheeks, rather like an underwater cave lined with small rocks and slippery, hidden things. The shock of wine-flavoured breath hits the back of his throat. He swallows involuntarily. Potter makes a muffled noise, and he swallows that, too. The boy spasms then, trying to wrench away. Severus stuffs his wand quickly inside his robes and catches hold of Potter's hair, forcing him to be still.

Now that he's committed himself, crossed the line, he realises this was always going to happen. He deserves something, and given the chance, he'll take it. It would be easier to smash and grab, but Severus doesn't want memories of assault. He wants the taste, the silky feel of inner skin, the helpless twitch when he traces Potter's tongue with the tip of his own, clumsy and foreign, sensual in its strangeness. He doesn't think he's ever been in the position to do this before, to anyone. He closes his eyes and slides around inside, as if he's dreaming in the dark, finding his way through a maze by touch alone.

Potter tastes of heavy red wine, of recent sex. Of unsapped life.

_Take it now, with my blessing_. This cannot possibly be what Albus had meant.

Severus drinks it in, regardless, and it kindles memories of what he once thought life was going to be. A curious buzz of Slytherin innocence tingles through him: _I'll show you. I'll show you all._ Yes, he remembers. Once upon a time, wanting was good. To have ambition was almost the same as having hope.

_I'll show you_, he thinks. Potter's free hand is crammed against his chest, clawing at his robes. If this is an actual attempt to push Severus away, it's having the opposite effect.

Exploring Potter's mouth—anticipating the bite, and almost disappointed when it doesn't come—he presses deeper, desperate for more, unwilling to stop because stopping means letting go and letting go means turning at last toward the empty horizon. He's not ready for that yet. Much better to hold Potter crushed to his body, practically buried in his robes. He shifts his legs and drags Potter between them. Even through layers of clothing, the boy's nakedness sings, clean limbs, skin like butter. Severus isn't that tall, and certainly not that broad, never mind that he prides himself on being able to stand up to just about anything. Even so, he could fairly claim to engulf this wiry, short-arsed boy hero. His outspread fingers span the parameters of the thick skull he's so often mocked. He wonders if Potter tastes the delirious poison on his tongue, if the imprint of his molten skeleton, reborn from the bloody ashes, glows hot through his robes.

Potter's stopped struggling. His mouth, while not exactly willing, hangs open. Unsated, Severus pushes deeper and licks harder and finally, through some miracle, lures Potter to offer him his tongue in return. Heat probes his mouth, a devastating intrusion, infinitely strange. He sucks at it raptly, lost in time. He's aware that, to the girl trapped on the bed and forced to watch, it must look exactly like a vampire draining its prey.

As if he gives a fuck what any Weasley thinks.

Finally, urged by the sense that time is running out, he finds himself back on the surface, pulling away. There's no choice, really. This is an aberration, and now that he's despoiled the Chosen One and shown himself up for the sick bastard he is, it's imperative he go somewhere, anywhere, else. This wasn't his task. As far as Severus can tell, there _was_ no task. It was a ruse or a lie. A punishment sprung on him like a practical joke.

Hair trails in his face, and he turns into it, seeking solace as he releases the boy's mouth. He's got one of Potter's arms twisted nearly behind his back, and his fingers are sunk in Potter's hair. He thrusts his captive away, wishing he could emulate Fawkes and burst into flames. He's already corroded inside, already consumed, on fire with this sickening hunger. Why shouldn't his body mirror his soul and burn up? Only with exultation, not anguish. He wants, with sudden vigour, to flaunt his rebirth. He wants—he—

—what a revolting thought: he wants Potter to be _amazed_.

The bewitching idiot lands semi a-sprawl the bed. His eyes are dumbfounded, his still-open mouth so red and wet that Severus' half-formed erection blooms full-length, hardening so fast that it almost pulls him off-balance. His prick's girth would perfectly fill the circumference of those soft lips, snag on Potter's teeth, slide throbbing and mouth-stopping along the swollen tongue that Severus has prepared by sucking.

A slight flush lurks beneath the boy's pale skin, and his limbs are spread for a moment, exposed. His cock's curved now, thick, rigid with alarm.

No surprise there. Potter's at the age of inappropriate erections. In Severus' experience, even a greasy half-blood can get a rise out of a teenage boy.

He turns and heads for the door, intelligence fighting desire every inch of the way. Since death wasn't enough, he'll have to free himself of Potter by other means. Wanting is not the same as having, and having is—out of the question. He's lain awake nights, shuddering with hatred, too obsessed to sleep. He's been beside himself with rage so many times over the little snot that it's a wonder he didn't die of stroke before the Dark Lord did him in. Clearly, the closer he is to the boy, the shorter his lifespan.

He should Disapparate and leave Harry Potter behind, one loss among many. Leave him to his fate. Never come near him again. Never feel responsible. Incendio the daily papers, hex the fools who dare to parrot society's praise of the Boy Who Lived. Ignore news of his wedding—for a wedding to this shrieking Weasley is surely in the cards.

He has to let him go.

Fuck. With a snarl at the impossibility of it all, he whirls in the doorway, swings his wand up, and casts. He doesn't need speech for this. The spell sizzles across the room and bursts, sparkling hot from Severus' temper, green and gold across Potter's bare chest. The sudden _crack_ pulls Severus up on his toes, head snapping back in magical whiplash. The boy jumps, but the sparks shower gently down upon him, vanishing on contact with his skin.

Panting, Severus fishes in his lefthand pocket, pulls out their wands, and hurls them to the floor at the foot of the bed. They clatter and roll. His own wand extended but trembling, he digs out Potter's glasses and places them on the chair by the door. His temples prickle with sweat. Exhaustion is hitting him in waves, and he can't stop to question what he's just done. It's time to abandon Hogwarts. To say good-bye.

He takes aim at Ginny Weasley and croaks, "_Finite incantatem_."

She bounces to her knees with a squeal of pure rage, hair flying, the sheets clutched to her breasts. "You pervert! You disgusting, horrible, filthy flobberworm!" She crashes into Potter, one freckled arm slapped frantically across his chest, patting him, holding him close. "Harry! Are you all right? What did he do to you?"

"I'm not hurt," Potter says sombrely. He doesn't break eye contact with Severus. Neither one is willing to be the first to look away.

But darkness is welling up in the distant background of Severus' soul, and he'll fall into it soon. He still smoulders, but the passion is very far away, the burn of it red-gold, its embers fading. If he doesn't leave now, he never will. They'll have to bury him under the castle's foundations. Mouth dry, he concentrates on Potter, the tip of his wand as sharp as a pin. _Legilimens_.

For a moment the air between them stretches empty, devoid of anything, singing with silence.

Severus considers his next move. If magic permitted, he'd Apparate into the past, straight into the dungeons. He'd abduct the figment of that raggedy-arsed little hyena who once gave himself with such singleness of purpose, who was willing—dear God, to die for love. Who put his Slytherin faith in a future that never came. This is what Fawkes has restored to him, what Albus may or may not have intended. He will resurrect that child, renew that sworn oath. He has a purpose now. _I'll show you. I'll show you all_.

He sends his thoughts across the room. _Look at me_, never mind that the boy's already looking. Never mind that for some reason he hasn't looked away once. Severus embeds his sole demand like a spike. _You owe me this much. Let me stay dead_.

Potter's brows knot as if in pain. Perhaps he used excessive force. Too tired to care, Severus breaks the connection. He adjusts his wand as if lining up his next shot, waits until Ginny Weasley raises her head, and growls, "_Obliviate_." Then, without a word to Potter—because he _has_ no words—he spins in place, his robes twisting through the air like a black morning glory. As they furl down around him, he conjures his Disillusionment and distraction spells, and yanks open the door.

Behind him, the redhead cries out, "Harry, what the—why are you— Oh, Merlin, I'm _naked_. Did we—? Oh God, we did! Why don't I remember? We had _sex?_ But I don't— " A sob of breath interrupts her outburst, then Ginny Weasley yelps, her voice rising, "You Obliviated me! You made me forget! Oh, that—that's terrible! Harry, how _could_ you!"

The stones seal over behind him, cutting off the girl's furious accusations and the boy's denials.

Utter silence descends, the reek of death and Dark magic. Severus glances up and down the burnt-out corridor, but there's no one else to whom he must say good-bye. He rubs his lips. He can still taste Potter. _The kiss of life_, he thinks, snorting. But it's true. Taking what he wanted only makes him want more, and he'll turn that to account. He will never stop wanting. He'll make a killing—hah!—on what he took from the boy, and in the end it will be worth more than all the words, all the touches, all the sweet, sullen tastes he's forbidden to have. Yes, he'll show them all—he's _brill_ at magic, no matter how many barriers he has to shatter in order to succeed.

Smirking—worse, grinning like the ugly yob he is, lips peeled back on clenched teeth—Severus strides straight for the nearest window, puts on a burst of speed, and with a sudden spin of his heel flings himself at the stars.

A second before his body hits the glass, he Disapparates.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

xxxxx

Dark. Hot. The tug and suck, the lust for more: wetness, friction. At first it's all unfocussed, blurry and urgent, pure sensation with me at the centre. The heat slides up, slides back, slides up. I know, even though I didn't at first, that someone's sucking my dick. All the rest of me is there, but I can really only feel my dick. It keeps pushing forward and someone's mouth keeps rising to meet it, and it's bloody unnerving. Wrong somehow, but at the moment I'm too confused and horny to sort it out. The ache is so intense it's like pain, sweet pain, with an underlying scrape I'm pretty sure is a thin ridge of teeth.

My gut cramps with nervousness. I'm fucking someone's mouth, a hot living softness clamped around me, slick and sucking, and I want it, I want it so much it takes an act of will to go slow and not rut.

As if moving through water, my hands float into view and settle slowly, touching hair. I'm gathering the long, thick hair in my hands, parting it like weeds, and the sense of wrongness grows. The strands cling to my palms, and it feels weird, not light and silky, but heavier, a loose, bedraggled weight.

I know what's wrong now, even though I try not to. Even though I try to _un_know.

The heat swallows me over and over. I'm panting, my chest heaving with pleasure, but I'm panicking now, my fingers crushing the coarse slippery clumps. I know they're not real, they can't be, but I do my damnedest to change the colour. To _will_ them the same shade as Ginny's shiny smooth coppery-brightness. Not black. Stop being black, damn it.

Nothing changes, and my conscience does a bunk. I rock my hips, thrusting down the offered throat, and there's no way he can get a word out past my cock. Good, because I don't want to hear it. I don't want him drawling spiteful barbs about my compromised masculinity. I know how bad this looks, no matter how fantastic it feels, I know this shouldn't be happening, never mind his tongue touching the pulse on the underside of my prick, tasting the rolled-back ring of foreskin.

At the same time—oh God, this makes no sense—I fuck his mouth to force a sound out of him, plunge down to wherever he hides his voice, doing my best to break the silence. To root out all the things he won't say to me. His voice is down there somewhere, a dark stain dripping from the end of a quill, from the lip of a goblet, black and fuming. A memory that can never be erased or washed out. It can only be shoved into a bin at the back of my mind and eventually, some secret night, taken out and buried.

And there, I'm fighting to come, struggling in darkness, alarmed and sore with unspent desire, the intensity pushing me up toward the surface, out of the dark.

Cheeks bulging, he looks up.

Desire, disgust: we both feel it. His mouth's distorted around me, shadows sunk under his cheekbones. His eyes gleam like scary things down a well.

A hand gropes my arse, guides my hips forward, and he takes me to the hilt. I can hear the hoarse, rhythmic bubble and gasp of his breathing. The heat between my legs tightens unbearably, the throb getting deeper, but even with my prick gagging his throat he finds a way to defy me, his bony nose and cool forehead pushed into my stomach, the butterfly-brush of his lashes against my bare skin. One pulse, another, a third boosts me toward orgasm, and it's like being drunk, the world reeling around me, air snorting through his nostrils, the wet, fluttery grip of his throat. He swallows, chokes, and—

—just as I'm about to come he finds his voice, or it finds me, swirls back to me from years past, a wave of utter loneliness that snarls up through the dark.

_Why didn't you come back for me?_

We both shake with it, this thing I didn't do, this cry I failed to answer because—fuck, I didn't know, and I can feel him shuddering under my hands, strangled and speechless with betrayal. Silence billows around us; and no winter wind is colder, no ring of teeth around my cock more castrating.

Oh God, Snape. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I pull harder, push deeper, give him a real reason to choke. Right now you'd have to cut off my hands to make me let go. Then the dream pulls him off me and drags him up and we're kissing, and oh fuck I remember now, I remember this kiss, even though I don't know how we got from there to here, from my prick in Snape's mouth to his tongue in mine, his hair dripping moonlight and stinking of smoke, the greasy ends ragged around my wrists. I let it happen, gripping the sides of his head, knowing in my heart the drape of hair should be silky and red and smell of baby powder, knowing the body in my arms should be graceful and curvy and have breasts heavy with milk. Knowing this is wrong. Knowing he should be dead.

The wind whimpers in my ears. My body aches, unsatisfied, the darkness a flat pillow at my back, fading now as spears of light spread from the point where our lips meet, our chests, erections, every place we're crushed together, a light that pierces and grows, unstoppable, taking Snape away, eating through the darkness and dissolving him while it fills me with a shining awareness of the world. He melts away between my hands, his mouth fading from mine as the entire space where I float, stiff with longing, whites out.

Silence. Sunlight. I'm awake. It wasn't real.

He isn't here.

The mattress gives as I shift my arse and stretch my neck to ease the tension. Toes and fingers unclenching, I open my eyes.

The pale ceiling stares down at me, and the light of early morning filters through the peach-coloured curtains. The bed dips, sheets rustling back. I listen to Ginny moving about, leaning over Al's crib to check on him before she pads sleepily to the loo. Al's doing his whimpery, snuffly morning thing. He's not quite awake yet, but he knows it's feeding time.

It takes an effort to clear the strange, stupid lust from my mind, and I keep my mouth open so I can breathe without making a sound. My heart's pounding, a quick, jittery pulse jumping in my groin. What a fucking intense dream. I haven't had one of those in … it's been a while. Our bedroom stands as still as a pool, the deepness of sleep draining out of it.

Pyjama seam pinching my cock, I shove myself up and swing my feet to the floor. I fumble my glasses on and sit for a minute staring at nothing. Wherever he—wherever the dream touched feels heightened and tingling with remembered sensation. I can still taste him.

Getting up, I scrub a hand through my hair and cross paths with Ginny coming out of the loo. She notices my tented pyjamas. Clearly not in the mood to do anything about it, she gives my crotch the sort of fond, fending-off pat that leaves me clutching the doorframe. In the shower I spell the water hot enough to shock the dream from my pores. Lust collects in the steam, slides in beads of water down the curtains.

When I was seventeen, the bastard kissed me.

The day I made history and the war ended. The day I died. The day I would've sworn _he_ died. The day Voldemort fell. And it was—Merlin, so many extreme and awful things happened that day, so much death, so many endings, but I think it's safe to say that Snape kissing me was without doubt the weirdest thing of all.

He burst in on us in the Room of Requirement. Me and Ginny, I mean. I don't know how he persuaded the door to open. I was there because I needed to lie down where no one could find me; needed it so badly the Room pulled itself together and found the magic to provide it. The castle stood crumbling around us, broken and smouldering on all sides, the towers like smashed teeth. There was rubble in the hallways, blocks of masonry, railings from staircases.

The Great Hall had become a morgue.

I walked the row of bodies, saying goodbye. To Remus, whom I'd called a coward. To Tonks lying beside him. Goodbye to Colin, who shouldn't even have been there. Goodbye to people I didn't know.

I wasn't ready to say anything like goodbye to Fred yet, so I turned and hugged Mrs. Weasley instead. She rocked me a little and tried to stop crying so she could say something about how I was alive and how wonderful that was. It made me feel kind of sick and helpless. Her boggart was real now, and it was worse than any of us ever imagined.

The body count and chaos and nerves and all the people looking at me helped me play my part, but the moment came when it felt like the ceiling was falling in. I couldn't stay there. I couldn't be in the middle anymore. Voldemort was dead. It was time to stop.

Ginny didn't ask, she just took my hand and we sneaked off together. A couple of floors up, we passed a window seat where Hermione sat with her head on Ron's shoulder. He'd been crying, and that started Ginny going again. I said, "We'll be upstairs for a while. In the Room, you know? Because I need to—we've got to— " and then _I_ started crying, and we all shuffled about and hugged each other and stood wiping our eyes on our sleeves. Ron's face squinched a little at sight of his sister leading me up the stairs, but whatever he might have been thinking he had the good sense not to say it.

We went as far as we could go and still be inside the castle. I wasn't sure the Room even still existed. But the door opened for us, and we went in. Smoke drifted from the corners, and the burnt walls crackled with hot spots, all the hidden things charred and blackened by Fiendfyre. But the Room's magic welcomed us. Candles lit, and a bed took shape, a big soft cushiony thing with red draperies, inviting us to crawl aboard and sink into sleep. We lay side by side, holding hands. I don't know about Ginny, but my head no sooner hit the pillow than I was out. I slept like the dead. When I woke up, I was still thinking about dying. I remembered my mum and dad, Sirius, Dumbledore. Lying there staring up at the canopy, I wondered how I'd found the courage to come back. The strength to say goodbye and leave them all behind.

For fuck's sake, I was a kid. It didn't feel like it then, but I was.

I look at Jamie now and think I'd go off my nut if someone tried to make him bear that. Make him responsible for saving the world. I'm not sorry for myself—I had friends, I had help, and other people died who were never offered the choice I had to come back. But it's one reason I don't fancy being treated like a hero. Don't call me the Boy Who Lived. Don't remind me. Because, damn it, I _was_ a boy. Now that I'm not anymore, I realise how fucked up it was for them to put me through that.

But I didn't think that way then. I was too tired to think. Downstairs, the Dark Lord lay under a sheet. The nightmare that had messed up my life—over.

It was over.

Except, not really. Not with all those bodies down in the Hall. Friends. Family, some of them. Ginny woke up sleepy, and I watched her remember. She put her arms over her face and I held her while she cried again. Downstairs, the rest of her family was sitting vigil, watching over Fred. Over George and Molly, too, in case—well, just in case. Arthur had understood about Ginny going with me. "Get some rest," he'd said. The way he stroked Ginny's hair, as if she was incredibly precious and he was afraid she might break. "One of you can sit with him later." He hadn't looked behind him at his sons. It was probably the last time there'd ever be confusion about which one he meant, Fred or George. And Fred's face, almost smiling. Fred, Christ, none of us could believe it, not _Fred_.

The Room gave us wine, and we both got a little drunk. Like we'd checked into some posh hotel in some other universe. It felt a bit like circling an invisible drain. After that we kind of fell into kissing, and when Ginny put her arms around me—God. I didn't know I needed to be held like that. I'll always love her for being there to comfort me that way.

It was weird and achy and happy-heartbroken all mixed up together. Things went on from there. Looking back, I wish we'd waited. It was like we were doing it more to forget than anything else. Which, you know. Be careful what you wish for.

Not an ideal first time, but still. It's not something you want taken away.

And I'd seen Snape die. I had no doubt he was dead, as dead as the Dark Lord, his throat ripped open and the Shack floor spattered with his blood. I'll never forget the haunted way he looked at me. He saw my mum in my eyes as he was dying, and I saw my mum through his, through his memories, pretty Lily Evans, young and kind and loved by so many. Absolutely normal, in spite of her magic. And there was Snape, anything but normal, trying and failing to be her friend.

I hadn't wasted much time trying to deal with it yet. All that anger was still pent up inside me with nowhere to go.

Then, sodding hell, he appeared out of nowhere, looking like an explosion waiting to happen, and my first thought was, "He's going to _kill_ me."

Wrong. He kissed me instead.

He was my professor, and a Death Eater, or he had been, and he hated me, and he was dead, only he wasn't, and he was a man, a dark, spiteful, fucked-up bastard (his blood on my hands, his cruelty all over my childhood), a man kissing me when I'd never even thought about men doing that, when I'd hardly had a chance to kiss girls, for fuck's sake, and he kissed me like it was the only thing he could do, the most important thing on earth, like it was his last sane act before he completely lost it. Like it was what he'd come back for. Only, when he pulled away from the kiss he was his old self again, all sneering and cold, and I felt like _I_ was the one who'd lost it.

I let him do it—Snape with his hooked nose and creepy teeth, and it's not like I'm a great kisser or anything, but neither was he—because I reckoned this was the kiss he'd never been able to give my mum. That it wasn't for me but something he'd saved for her.

Only once he finished, I wasn't so sure about that anymore.

Seventeen. And he was thirty-eight. I feel strange, sometimes, thinking about it.

He never said a word to me. I just assumed it was because he was furious I'd left him for dead. _Why didn't you come back for me?_ I still wake up with my heart trying to claw its way out of my chest, and it takes me a moment to remember he's alive.

I found out later that the Shrieking Shack burned right down to the ground.

I left him there, right? Just like Dumbledore had left him. He'd served his purpose, so I forgot all about him. About bringing him home. I didn't mean to.

But he was alive, and—damn it, I wish he'd Obliviated me, too.

Well, no. I _wish_ I wished that. Sometimes. It'd be easier. Mostly I try not to think about it.

I didn't forget, though, and if anybody ever really tried to take those memories away, I'd—well, to be honest, I don't know what I'd do.

xxxxx

You know something's wrong when you start the day thinking: I can't wait to go back to that prison.

A Muggle shrink would rake me over the coals. But it's the first thing—assignment—no, _thing_ that's interested me in weeks. Months, even, if you don't count Al. The Ministry has to find a replacement for Azkaban, and the new prison's a smashing example of the sort of magic that still takes my breath away. Weird and beautiful the way magic always used to be. Either they're doing something right or something really, really wrong there. And I want to be the one to find out.

The smell of flowers gets into my mouthful of porridge as Ginny manoeuvres behind my chair. "Shall I fetch the scones out? Mum sent lemon curd."

"Not for me, thanks."

"Cream?"

"No, I'm good."

Ginny circles the table again, carrying Al in a sling. She refills Jamie's juice and summons the scones from the kitchen. They're a bit singed. Pink-faced with annoyance, she sends them right back.

"Gin, you haven't eaten a thing yet. We're fine. Sit down and have a cuppa before I head out?"

She pulls her hair away from Al's grabby fists, narrows her eyes because she thinks I'm being critical, then catches herself, sighs, and plops down in a chair. She hardly ever eats breakfast anymore.

It's noisy at table. Al's constipated or colicky or something. Cranky, anyway. Usually he's much better-behaved than Jamie ever was. I stir brown sugar into my porridge as if nothing's wrong. Not to be outdone in the fussing department, Jamie starts in acting like a prat. He still shows no sign of accepting that Al's here to stay. He'll come around eventually, but in the meantime he's like some diabolical house elf: "Babies is stinkers! Jamesie not liking stinky baby!" I hide my laugh behind my hand. It just encourages him, Ginny says.

She's right. The next second he starts capsizing cups and throwing dishes off the table. The crash makes Albus howl like a Fwooper, and tiny crow's-feet tighten the corners of Ginny's eyes. I pull Jamie onto my lap for a stern talking-to, then hunker over my coffee while Ginny casts _Reparo_ on the mess and wipes Al's mouth.

She empties the cream pitcher into her mug, sips her nearly-white coffee, and eyes me over the tilted rim. I risk a suggestive eyebrow. Her expression doesn't change. She used to snicker and there'd be mischief instead of tension lines in her face and we'd both struggle not to be the first one to blink or look away. I was pants at it, but I made up for it with a nice bedroom tackle. I've learned a lot about kissing since—well, since the day Snape put his tongue in my mouth.

"Harry? Look, I know we've been over this, but why don't you let me take the three o'clock feedings? Better all round, I should think."

"Better how?" My mind had wandered off, but this brought it right back. "I like sharing. I know you don't believe me, but really, I don't mind getting up."

She jiggles Al a bit and lets her head loll back so that her hair spills down the chair rungs. It's so silky. I love touching her hair. I'm glad it's not black.

"Right, then do me a favour. No moping the next morning at breakfast."

We have these tiffs. Mild ones. They go down nice with toast, I suppose, because lately we can't start the day off without one. I was daydreaming, not moping. There's a difference, but never mind. And really, compared to Jamie's first year when the little bugger had us stumbling around at all hours catering to his every need, Al's a pushover. For what it's worth, I like being awake when the house is dark, everyone else is asleep, and I can snuggle our new baby to my heart's content.

So it's not that. Really. I just woke up with a hard-on and a head full of memories.

I can't tell Ginny it's because I had one of _those_ dreams. She'd say, what dreams? Visiting the prison yesterday is probably what stirred it up. God, that sounds like a filthy joke. So some things I'm better off not sharing. Too many secrets hark back to a sore point between us, signified by the letters R O R.

I never told her. I let her believe I did that to her, took away her memory of the two of us that night in the Room. It's something else to hate Snape for. He made me choose between betraying him or betraying Ginny. I don't think he even realised he was taking revenge. Since it was pretty obvious I owed him his life and probably for mine, too, I did the honourable thing. I kept his bloody secret. In return I got stuck with a lie, a speck of rot that spread through my marriage. It infects how Gin feels about me to this day.

Not that she's ever said so. Maybe I'm too thin-skinned about it.

The dream left me aching inside, I don't know why. Sad because Ginny's beautiful and impatient and doing her best—sunlight all over her hair as she paced in front of the windows, walking Al back and forth while he nursed. Every line of her showed through the sheer nightgown, every curve in the early sun. It's a touchy subject, the fact that she's not in tiptop competitive shape anymore. She looks so young in white it almost scares me, and I want her to have everything in the world, whatever makes her happy. Right now I'm not sure I know what that is.

A Quidditch contract, for starters. But having James and Al meant swapping her Harpies career for a sports column in _The Daily Prophet_. "Indefinitely," we said when she announced her retirement. Ginny's not fooled. She knows it means "forever."

This morning I had a moment of wanting to fling back the covers, jump up and take them all in my arms. My family. Mine. But Ginny looked too cross to be touched, so I didn't. Sometimes I love her so much—I mean _love_ her, which was supposed to be enough—but I'm like a stupid bystander. I don't know what to do so I end up doing nothing, the next best thing to useless.

We're no Molly and Arthur, that's for sure. It's something we try not to blame each other for, the fact we both figured this out too late. Too late meaning we'd already had James.

"You're about fifteen minutes from being on the clock," Ginny says out of the blue.

"Oh, shite." Startled, I shoot out of my chair.

"Daddy!" Jamie squeals as I get him squared away on the kitchen floor and _Accio_ my work robes with my free hand. Little bugger's super quick on his feet. Quidditch reflexes, according to Charlie. He darts away from me, and just as I'm straightening up a burnt scone zigzags out of the kitchen and lands me a right smack on the cheek.

At first I think _nice_ and frown at Ginny, but she's looking back at me, just as astonished. So then we give Jamie the same bug-eyed smile.

"Daddy!" he cackles, pointing a finger at me. "Language!" and Ginny curls forward over Al and starts to giggle. For a second we get to share it, this joy at being parents of such a magical little bloke. It's moments like these I think we'll turn out all right.

I brush the crumbs off my face and say, "Well, that certainly woke me up. Thanks for that, you loon. Maybe your mum should go do my job and I should stay here so we can have a scone fight. What d'you think?"

Abruptly Ginny turns her face away and rests it on Al's curly-dark head. She goes straight from giggling to rocking back and forth and shutting me out. Oh bugger. What did I say? Moments like these, I think I'll never get it right. So I chatter quietly to Jamie and let him pretend-help me with my Auror robes.

Me and Ginny, we had it all sorted: she'd be like her mum, only more athletic and, what's the word, ornamental. I'd be like Arthur, only—I don't know, more of a celebrity. Christ, I almost missed out on having this. Being a dad is overwhelming and incredible and … I'm sort of donkey's bollocks at knowing what to do next. Never had a chance to be a son, is why. Everybody knows and is very nicely not saying it, despite that I was sort of counting on a close-knit family being the answer to my prayers, which, yeah. Selfish. I see that now.

But I didn't know it was a fantasy. I thought it was real. I didn't know it was selfish, holding onto this promise of unconditional love as my reward for—well, never mind. We all made sacrifices.

Ginny and I both reckoned we'd be Weasleys in the grand tradition. But we're not, just earnest and a tiny bit stroppy with each other. I can't figure out what else she thinks I want. And I can tell she's worried that she's not Apparating over the moon about Al. She's happy and all, sure. But she thought she'd turn hey-presto into her mum once she got knocked up.

'Knocked up' —her words, not mine.

Family was always my dream; now it's my reality. It doesn't have to be perfect. Anybody who says otherwise, Ginny included, is just being daft.

Jamie squeezes two of my fingers in a sticky grip, and I announce, like it's some kind of big deal, "Time to go." Ginny stands up at once, no sign of secret unhappiness, but no happiness, either, and they all follow me to the door.

Merlin, why doesn't she understand? I got what I wanted. This is what I want.

Never mind. I'll firecall Hermione later and maybe we can pop down to the Hay and Hoe. It's easier to talk surrounded by Muggles who don't give a crup's fart about who we are. Ginny and Ron followed us there once, suspicious. God, I hope they _never_ live that down. Thinking we were, I don't know, sneaking around behind their backs, having a slice off a cut loaf. For loving us so much, they sure are short on trust. I guess it looked a bit off, the two non-Weasleys in both marriages nipping down to a Muggle pub to drink and sound off about—marriage to Weasleys, imagine that.

Chipper as can be, I give my broom a twirl on my way out, hoping Ginny will understand my change of mood as a plea for forgiveness. Bloody hell, it was nothing more than a bad dream. Well, a good dream but a bad memory. Or a good memory but a very bad idea. All right, a fucked-up memory and a horrible idea and nobody's business but mine. Well, and Snape's, wherever the hell he is.

Which is why Ginny's better off not knowing.

The front of our cottage glows white, like it's just been washed. Light bounces off the windows, and the clean air is bracing. One side of my face is in shadow, the other's practically blinded.

I sling a leg over my broomstick. Kingsley wants my report on the new prison delivered in person. I have loads to say, especially about the magic-suppressing part of their proposal. I might even ask for assignment to the regular monthly inspection, assuming the Ministry decides it's better off contracting out its prisoners than rebuilding Azkaban. Which, in spite of my reservations, is the course I'll recommend, because Azkaban? Total public relations disaster. And the proposed facility's a pretty fascinating place.

"Firecall if you're flying home late," Ginny says, leaning in the doorway.

I hover my broom. I can see myself reflected in the kitchen window, broken up into smaller pieces. "Why would I be late?"

She shrugs, lifting Al to her shoulder in spit-up position. "Just give me some warning, is all I'm saying. I might want to invite Mum over for company."

Better postpone having a pint and a moan, then. "Invite Mum over" is Weasley-speak for needing a chin-wag with the child-rearing expert and world's best homemaker; or, in truly dire moments, a shoulder to cry on. I love Molly, but her constant presence is like proof I'm not holding up my end.

"I'll be home on time," I say.

Ginny's freckles have faded a bit. She's not out in the sun as much since she quit the Harpies. I drift closer, focusing on my favourite spots. After I kiss one or two, she pushes me away, and I rotate in easy circles, the broom's shadow sweeping clockwise over the grass. Jamie shrieks, and we pretend it's all meant in good fun. Ginny's smile is forced and kind and I can tell she wants me to go. She invites her old Quidditch pals over for tea when I'm not there, which is fine. I'd like to be included more often, but hey, I'm not always around.

I take the broom up a few feet, then yell back down, "No reason to leave your Dad out of it, is there? Invite them both over for dinner. If you want a sit-down with your mum, I'll lure him out to the garden for a man-to-man chat about those crazy Muggles."

She pretends not to hear me and softly shuts the door. I lean back, jerk the nose of my broom, and skyrocket upward until the wind almost hoicks my glasses off. The broom bucks and swerves under me. It's one of George's experimental prototypes. Every year he sends me his latest, with instructions not to fall off. I can feel the sun burning both sides of my face. They're always a bit eager, these racing models.

Once I'm high enough, buffeted by the wind, I shout, "Damn it!" three times with all my might, and then tilt my broom down, gasping as the air pressure wallops the tightness in my chest.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Some gruesomeness in this chapter. Probably mild for the general run of readers, but it's not often I write gore and I'd rather err on the side of caution.

I re-wrote two-thirds of this chapter in a hurry, so if anyone spots typos or incoherence, please feel free to point them out.

**Chapter Five**

xxxxx

When I was nineteen, Snape saved my life.

I was a junior Auror on a raid, tracking a rogue werewolf who made a point of hunting down humans and inflicting horrible, disfiguring bites. Shades of Fenrir Greyback and an insult to Remus Lupin's memory. My partner for the stakeout, Nigel Finstock, had far more experience at trapping Dark creatures than I, so I reckoned it was simply practise in working doubles and watching his back.

"No leads so far on who Wolfie might be or why he's on a rampage," Finstock told me once I'd finished studying the gruesome photos of the victims. These were attached to a crime scene board, and in each frame the camera's eye scanned up and down the bodies and then reverted back to their faces and started over again. At least they'd all survived.

What a fucking awful way to start my shift. I wandered back over to the desk. The department had supplied scones and coffee to fortify us for the long watch, but after what I'd just seen, I couldn't imagine putting anything in my stomach.

"Wolfie?" I muttered, because humour seemed out of place here.

"They're dark creatures," Finstock said, shrugging. "I don't like giving dark creatures an exaggerated sense of their own importance. Mockery's a pretty good leveller, in my opinion."

He was seated on the desk, one leg drawn up and his foot gently swinging back and forth. As he talked, he managed a gangly backwards twist that reminded me of Ron, as casually graceless as if we were sharing a cuppa in his kitchen. He spelled open a drawer behind him, but instead of the witness reports I expected, out floated a container of chocolate syrup. Finstock poured half of it into his cup, then repeated the contortion to summon a small glass jar of cinnamon, tapping it carefully until the coffee's surface was sprinkled with powder. I stared at him as he flicked his wand and the concoction started churning and frothing.

Oblivious, he nattered on, "But in the end, you know, werewolves are people first. Most of them find ways to stop themselves from savaging others. It's an affliction, not a moral disease, so this pattern of mutilation is a sign we're probably dealing with a monster."

I folded my arms, not doing a very good job of covering my annoyance, because it wasn't as if I didn't already know a few things about werewolves.

Finstock picked up his cup and took a quick swig, closed his eyes for a moment, then screwed up his face and set the coffee down as far away from him as possible. "Merlin's nose hairs, that's disgusting." I must have snorted, because he levitated the cup over to me with a mischievous look. "Go ahead, I'm open to second opinions. No? You sure? Smart boy." His short beard scrunched in an amused scowl as he vanished the contents. "Muggles always do such deliciously strange things to coffee. I just can't seem to get the hang of it."

Feeling I'd probably been an arse, I relaxed enough to fetch my own cup. "Potions not your subject, then?"

He finger-combed his curly fringe and considered. The hair was receding on both sides, so the curls clustered like an island over his forehead. It put me in mind of a poodle. "I coulda been a contendah," he sighed suddenly, in an accent so atrocious I had trouble identifying it as cod-American. Finstock cleared his throat and went back to speaking in his perfectly serviceable Devonshire. "I tell you, old man, the pains I took to be mediocre in that class. I could have scored a pretty decent potions NEWT, but no. Didn't want the Lord High Bollocker to get me in his sights. So I underperformed like mad. Half the boys in my house believed the greasy wanker could shrivel your testicles from across the room with a single death glare, no Shrinking Solution required."

I was about to comment snidely on Snape's ability to shrivel grades, too, when Finstock rose from his perch and stretched his long arms and legs, revealing a soft middle amidst all the lanky angles. He must have been teased about it a lot, because he gave his paunch a little self-conscious pat. "Behold the Finstock bump. Blighting the physique of Finstock males for untold generations. Fortunately the lad at home likes a man who supplies his own customised pillow." I noticed he fussed with the drape of his robes and even so ended up looking about five months pregnant.

"Pity," he remarked, summoning a satchel with a succinct twirl of his wand. "Snape paid the price for being a right convincing bastard, didn't he? I'm rather sorry I tucked tail and threw the match when I did. Now I'll never know what it would've been like to cross wits in a fair fight with the old mind-fucker."

And I remembered, with a blow to my heart that was almost staggering—because there was no way that should have hurt, no _way_—that Snape was dead. Years dead. To everyone but me.

"Right, then. Let's not stand on ceremony," said Finstock. Flick, and his robes darkened from red to black. Flick, and so did mine. Camouflage. "Any objections to being on a first name basis with the likes of me? Smashing. Call me Nige."

"Harry."

"You don't say." He grinned. "Now, I can't promise we'll get lucky tonight. Wolfie might show. Or Wolfie might second-guess us and bugger off. No way to predict. The crucial thing is, if Wolfie breaks cover, Stupefy like your life depends on it. Because it bloody well does. Hex the wretch into the ground, cast Incarcerous, and no faffing about, because werewolves don't stay down for long. Bloody beasts throw off stunning spells sooner than you can say 'Merlin's left tit.'

"I'm packing a silver muzzle," he continued, holding it up to show me. "And," he dug around in the satchel, setting off a suspicious clinking, "a matching set of cuffs." Pulling out several glittering links of chain, he waved the manacles around for my benefit. "Kinky, eh? Our preferred option is to incapacitate the wretch, but sometimes you have no choice." He piled everything into the satchel and peered at me. "Sometimes it's kill or be killed. You okay with that?"

"I fought in the war," I said, more sharply perhaps than the question warranted.

Nigel had every right to reprimand me for my cheek. Instead he frowned, sucking his lips in with a thoughtful grimace, his brown poodle curls bobbing as he gave his head a little shake. "You were a kid," he said quietly. "You're still a kid, by my estimate. Yes, I'm aware you defeated Voldemort in a fight to the death, but he died essentially by his own hand. You didn't curse with the intent to kill. From all the testimony I've turned up, you never have." When my control started to slip—I hate it when people harp on about the Boy Who Did This and That Unbelievable Thing, but I can't abide the assumption that it was pure luck and nothing else—Nigel cut me off with a sympathetic noise. "I don't doubt you, Harry. That's not what this is about. I'm just trying to prepare you for the worst."

I flushed. One of my first assignments, and I was already behaving like an oversensitive prat. "Sorry," I said. "I'm not used to having my inexperience taken into account. Usually whoever's in charge just tells me they have faith in me and tosses me in at the deep end."

"Don't worry, I'm not the type to withhold information," Nige said. "If anything, I tend to overshare." He patted the Finstock bump meaningfully. "So you won't take this as a criticism if I ask to see your boots?"

Smirking, I stuck one foot out. "I got your memo reminding me to wear dragonhide. I gather I shouldn't expect reimbursement?"

"Oh frabjous day, a partner who reads my memos!" Nige said, ignoring my question. He stuck out a foot of his own, and together we admired our expensive accessories. "Werewolves prefer the juicier bits, throats and stomachs and so on, but if our mark is laid out flat on the ground, he's going to lunge for the nearest body part. Ergo, feet. Furthermore, if you have to kick Wolfie in his great toothy snout, this is going to inflict a bigger dent than your average leather."

Regaining his balance, he cast Tempus, and something in his shambling, affable persona seemed to change course and flow into a subtly different configuration. He stood straighter. I realised, perhaps for the first time, that I was in the presence of a trained professional.

"Ready to face the devil? Good man. Remember to Disillusion yourself. Featherweight charms on both feet. Once we're there, I'm going to cast a spell to mask our scent, but it messes with the sweat glands, so it's not easy to sustain for longer than two hours at a stretch." He fell silent, concentrating on a thorough check of his kit. "Speak only when necessary. And keep in mind this beast's been targeting Muggles, so our non-magical counterparts in local law enforcement have probably studied the pattern of assaults and come to similar conclusions about the location of the next attack. You don't want to step in front of a Muggle bullet meant for our predator.

"Bugger," he said abruptly. "Nearly forgot. There's something I wanted to ask you. You grew up Muggle, right?"

I loosened my stiff shoulders and suppressed a sigh. This sort of opening was usually followed by an insinuating and extremely personal question about the war, my background, or my opinions on any number of political issues. "Yeah. I had no idea the wizarding world existed until my Hogwarts letter arrived."

Nige radiated delight. "Wicked. You wouldn't happen to be a movie buff, would you? Back when I was merely an aspiring young novice in the field of dangerous creatures, I researched every bloody thing I could find on werewolves, from medieval horror stories to the published results of aconite experiments on lupine volunteers to modern-day incident reports. A rather snotty footnote in a scholarly journal put me onto those Muggle inventions called 'movies'—yes, yes, I'm sure I sound like an idiot to you, but the whole concept—brilliant! I was quite bowled over. Unfortunately, there are dozens of things that make no sense. Perhaps some night you could be persuaded to join me and my partner for a movie marathon? And perhaps you'll even let me pester you with hundreds of foolish questions? For example, the question of why a man would think gluing fake fur all over his face qualifies him to impersonate a wolf?"

I'd never really had a chance during my years at Privet Drive to indulge in Muggle pastimes like television, and the very thought of me wasting pocket money on the cinema—having pocket money at all—would have given Petunia a case of the collywobbles.

I grinned at Nige, unexpectedly cheered by the thought. "I'm no expert, but sure. I'm game. Would it impose too much if I invited a couple of friends along? One's even more Muggle than I am."

"Splendid," Nige said. "I'll talk to Emilio about ordering dinner in. You lot can help me choose the lineup for the film festival." He continued to beam privately to himself, keen as a child, then his expression sobered and he stepped closer, curling one hand around my arm just above the elbow. "I've got the Apparition coordinates, so I'll perform the Side-Along. Be ready to cast an infrared Lumos or you'll likely walk smack into a tree and reveal our super secret agent surveillance plot, understood?"

I nodded, nerves prickling.

Reality compressed around us for an unbearable second, then my feet hit the ground and the countryside slammed into existence around us: a shaggy, owl-infested neck of woods in a valley not far from a Muggle village. There was a cold snap that night, and the peaks on the skyline shone like a bunch of bald heads. I shivered. Nothing up there but a dusting of snow. The full moon glared, silver-bright enough to make you squint, but so black under the trees it was like being blind. Hard to get a positive ID with that checkerboard effect contradicting and cancelling everything out, the trees rustling nonstop, kicked up by the wind. Chilly, too. We wrapped ourselves in black robes, cast warming charms on top of all our other protective spells, and settled down to wait.

The howling started about an hour into our watch. Nige elbowed me gently, and we crept toward a break in the trees. An empty hillside sloped up in front of us, coldly glowing, and we could hear the wolf panting and snuffling, ranging around nearby, but it was wily and refused to move any closer.

"Nothing for it," Nige muttered in my ear. "I'll provide the bait and you'll provide the backup. Keep a steady hand on your wand and Stupefy at will."

He dropped his Disillusionment charm and walked fearlessly out between the trees, head high, a tall silhouette with robes flapping and curls doing a crazy dance atop his head. I was suddenly deluged by memories of the breathholding tension from my year on the run, the frozen woods, the threadbare tent, Ron and Hermione following me into hell. The paralysing knowledge that danger was constantly circling, constantly searching for us. All the calm of that years-long death sentence flooded back to me as if it had never gone.

I pushed the dread down into the pit of my stomach.

It got colder. The silence deepened, crackling over the world like frost. It went on for a long time, longer than I'd expected, weirdly peaceful except for the wind. I'd reckoned once the werewolf spotted a prospective victim we'd be able to wrap this up in no time. Wrong. Nige wandered back and forth, ignoring me, every now and then stooping to peer at something on the ground, apparently unconcerned.

A sudden galloping, snarling rush shattered the suspense. I saw a shadow hurtling through the shadows, heard paws racing over the grass. Nige pivoted, and I gripped my wand, and we both shouted.

"_Stupefy!_"

A furry shape flipped into the air, somersaulting to earth with a solid thud. Moonlight gleamed on its fangs and its staring eye. Sprawled in darkness, the body jerked alarmingly, and Nige's wand flashed. "_Incarcerous_."

I ran out into the open to join him. The lower half of his face twitched in a perfunctory smile, but his attention was entirely on the wolf. We stood gazing down at the massive creature crisscrossed tightly with magical rope, its sides heaving, its lips streaked with foam.

"Got you," Nige said softly.

He drew a pair of thick gloves from an inner pocket and donned them neatly, smoothing them down over his fingers before crouching to examine the angle and calculate the most efficient way to force the muzzle over the gaping jaws.

Just as he was gripping the wolf's nose, a bloodcurdling wail wavered out of the woods to our left, trailing off into a hacking growl. The silver muzzle hooked in his fingers, Nige shot to his feet, and I spun, determined to get a fix on the animal through the moon-washed darkness.

A hand squeezed my shoulder. "Stand fast, Harry. I halfway expected this. Something about the timing and distance between the attacks didn't add up. Wolfie having a mate clears that up nicely." He let go and raised his wand. "Don't worry, I've brought enough bondage equipment to subdue them both."

We heard paws thundering over dry leaves, then the lean shadow leaped out from between the trees. At the same time there was a sharp crack behind us. I cast, but Nige cried out and fell against me, fouling my aim. Rather than catching the werewolf full on, my spell only glanced off its flanks and sent it rolling and stumbling.

Nige was on his hands and knees. "Jelly-Legs Jinx. Can't stand up yet. Guard your back!"

I turned just in time as a hooded figure behind us threw a curse, and a spray of red detonated against my shielding spell. The hillside lit up. Nige shouted a hex, bracing himself upright on one gloved hand. I concentrated on hurling counter-curses. Even illumined by moonlight, the hills and the woods were strange and shadowy, and it was hard to see the target.

Somewhere in darkness, a wolf coughed.

Two more cracks, like bones breaking, and Nige gasped, "Ambush."

A voice I didn't recognise pronounced a spell, and the bindings on the fallen werewolf vanished. I forced everything I had into my next cast, so furious it knocked my adversary several feet through the air. Then I ducked, intending to grab Nige's arm and get us out of there. I had to deflect an Incarcerous first, slithery, snaky ropes swarming down upon us. I threw them back at their caster, but the wizard knotted them up in a ball and destroyed them.

The voice called, "_Ennervate!_"

The silver muzzle glinted in the grass. I lunged for it. On the ground at our feet, the shaggy body quivered, then convulsed. Nige fell on his arse and tried desperately to crawl backwards, and I reached for him, saying, "Grab my hand," but the wolf squirmed over, its eyes flaring red, and clamped its teeth onto his arm.

Nigel screamed like a child, and Merlin, I couldn't curse it off him because I still had two wizards (no, fuck, three, my original attacker had rejoined the fight) and the other werewolf trying to kill us. I couldn't go for help or I would have left him to be mauled to bloody rags. Locked together, they struggled and kicked and rolled at my feet, growling, grunting, Nige occasionally crying out in agony. A thought pierced my concentration: _Stupefy_ them both. I turned, and a spell hissed past my head, blinding me. I risked a moment to hurl a Patronus, then staggered around, pouring with sweat and parrying curses, flinching and twisting at every snarl and snap of teeth.

"Harry, get out of here! Apparate!" Nige groaned from below, choking on the words. He was answered by a harsh, deranged noise, the snarl of an animal. Merlin, that was me. Barely in time, I flung another _Protego_. Green light burst over us like a tropical fountain and blackened the grass.

"Harry— "

Something crunched, crunched again with a deep, splintering sound, and Nige gurgled and stopped talking.

I didn't look. It wasn't a conscious decision. I was aware the struggle in the grass had stopped. I refused to think about it. My mind just switched tracks. I ignored the horrible noises of chewing and ripping I heard at my feet, otherwise I would have vomited and run stark raving mad.

A steadying voice started up in my head, whispering over and over not to be afraid. Death wasn't so bad; I'd been there before. (Curse green, hex red, fight, keep casting, don't look, don't think.) _Dying_ would be horrible—not to mention I didn't want to—but on the other side of it my parents waited. (Look out! Turn around, here it comes, arm up, arm down, use a different spell, missed, missed again, can't see, there, there, _Crucio_ you fucker.)

I ached for Ginny, though. For failing her. For being stupid enough to get myself killed.

Curse light flared in my lenses, and my arm spasmed so hard I nearly dropped my wand. Returning fire, I tripped over Nigel's body, and my _Confringo_ flew wild, missing my target and blasting a piece out of the hill. Fuck. My pulse hammered in my ears. No. Not now. I couldn't afford to slow down. I wanted to live. I wanted to _live_.

A nearby crack of Apparition sent my heart into my shoes. So much for what I wanted.

The newcomer spun in my direction, as black and billowing as a Lethifold. This was it. Furious, I almost wasted what energy I had left casting _Stupefy_. But not everything. I saved one last spell. One last ounce of magical vengeance to kill the creature that had murdered Nigel.

My opponent blocked the spell, and in the brief splash of deflected magic I saw a crescent of face. Even cratered with shadow at eyes and cheeks, shadow pouring down both sides, the crescent glimmered moon pale. Dungeon pale.

At the sight of it I nearly bit my tongue in two.

Then a raging curse came whistling through the air like a bolt of pure hate, a curse propelled by old hurt and unhealed grievances. A curse that had waited twenty-five years to be cast.

A Slytherin curse.

Behind me, the werewolf feeding on Nigel burst into flames.

The meadow exploded with light. The terrified creature screamed as heartrendingly as Nigel, rolling over and over and biting at its haunches, sparks blistering the grass. It leaped to its feet and bolted flaming through night, running in circles and nearly setting one of its allies on fire. Then all hell broke loose good and proper and we were all yelling and lobbing curses back and forth, flares of power sizzling in the darkness.

Well, not all of us. Snape stayed mum. But his wand sliced the air, and one of my attackers shrieked in surprise, falling backwards, blood flying from his arms, his chest, spraying his face.

_Sectumsempra_.

I had the presence of mind not to shout Snape's name. Fair bet he would have stunned me right into the branches of the nearest tree. Instead, I pulled myself together and flung a Leg-Locking jinx, a Confundus, another Incarcerous, not stopping to think. I just fought.

Bloody fucking hell, I refused to die now. Snape was there. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

Between the two of us, we routed the attackers. The fact that someone else had joined the fray, someone as Dark as they were, as unhampered by scruples or legal oaths, as bent on murder—well, it broke their resolve. The howls of the burning wolf, flipping and squirming horribly on the ground, the stink of scorched fur and flesh, probably helped to unnerve them. I know it did me.

The remaining werewolf broke away and streaked off into the underbrush. Shortly after, one of the wizards Disapparated with a hasty crack. The second realised his predicament, heaved his bleeding comrade to his feet, made a stumbling turn, and split the air with a sound like rubbish bins crashing over. I expect there was Splinching wherever they ended up.

A glass bell of silence closed around us, slightly echoey with my breathing, the roar in my ears. I wasn't dead even though that didn't make sense. My robes were spray-painted with blood, but I wasn't hurt, not even a scratch, I was safe, I was alive, dripping with another man's death, and it occurred to me Nige's body must still be warm, Nige's partly eaten body, and oh God, oh fuck it, this wasn't life, this was _hell_.

The night went on about its business, cold and aloof, like a lake's surface closing over a drowning man. So serene, as if nothing had happened.

Off in the depths of the woods, the werewolf's howl thinned to nothing like a pulled thread. I wouldn't have been surprised if the whole dark universe had unravelled around me, hanging in little squiggles of utter irrelevance.

Several yards away, standing alone, Snape swivelled sharply from side to side, scanning our surroundings. Only after he was sure there were no surprise attacks in the offing did he stride over, knuckles jagged around his wand. For a moment he stared down at the blackened wolf. The firelight jumping in the burning grass made a devil's playground of his face.

With a vicious slash of his arm, he doused the flames.

I stared down at Nige. His face, no. Not enough of it left. I didn't want to see his teeth grinning through his cheek. His beard—the wolf had eaten most of it. Stop. No. Further down. The Finstock bump—a messy, slimy, gaping hole. No. Don't think. My eyes darted to his dragonhide boots. Don't. I should have knelt, but I couldn't. I couldn't go any closer. My breaths were coming shallowly, fast, a frantic gulping for air, for control. The scent-masking spell had stopped working, and I was drenched with sweat. Something. Something about movies. We were going to watch movies together. He was shy about his pillow, but his partner liked it. A pillow with its intestines torn out. Oh God, Potter, shut up. Shut up, shut up.

Footsteps swished through the grass. A whiff of charcoal. I kept my eyes on Nigel's feet. A silent figure slipped past me and bent down, wand travelling back and forth. Bastard. He was very thin, his hair this extra drape of shadow, like a hiding place. I'd watched him die, too. I remembered him lying there with his throat torn out.

When he raised his eyes to mine, I couldn't read them. I didn't need to. I glanced quickly away at something stretched on the ground, separate and glistening with blood.

An arm.

"Fuck," I whispered, not meaning to, "fuck, damn it, _fuck_," wanting to howl, wanting to get away. From Nigel, from yet another dead body, someone I should have saved and didn't. He shouldn't have died, damn it. This was our first assignment. We were going to watch movies together. I couldn't prove it, but I'd bet anything that ambush was meant for me. Me, Harry Potter. The Boy For Whom Everyone Died.

I was shaking so hard I thought I might fall down.

Snape straightened, smoke blurring all over him. The wind flapped, keening through the trees, the sky looming up above. If it got any bigger or blacker, everything in my head was going to explode.

It seemed fitting that Snape would be there, too. Just me and Snape in all this head-ringing, tooth-chattering emptiness. My chest hurt. It felt like—like hunger, like wanting something so much my heart was eating a hole in my chest. Something chewing me up from the inside out. I didn't know why. I didn't know what was happening.

Oh bollocks. I'm not an imbecile. Of course I knew. Because you can't ever escape the past, right? Snape had found me, and now my heart was like this hot, aching crater because he and I were alone, just the two of us, with all this unfinished history and two bodies and death like a stink in the air. Desperation and failure and that terrible, bottomless look in his eyes.

Half an hour ago, Nigel Finstock had patted my shoulder. But people died. People died _for me_. Even Snape. I should have gone back for him. Why the fuck had he kissed me? Why, when I'd left him for dead?

He stood apart, wrapped in thought. I was suddenly sure he'd Disapparate. Disapparate and leave me alone in the dark.

Instead he passed one hand over his face and tilted his head so far back his hair ran down like water. In the moonlight it looked wet against his robes. He stared at the stars. I stared at him. When he lowered his head, I was still staring.

Another gust of wind swept through all that black—clothes and hair and smoke—and it took me a moment to realise he was being swept along with it.

Toward me. He stalked forward, robes undulating around him, spreading out, the kind of blackness that will swallow you up if you let it touch you.

The open slope of the hill was like a turn-of-the-century Muggle photograph, ghostly and colourless except for the charred circle where the half-incinerated wolf still leaked smoke. I remember the stars overhead being strangely intense, like holes punched in a blindfold. It was so sodding dark the pinpricks of light that got through pierced with all the force of a blazing sky.

Close up, Snape was as bony and creepy as ever, lips tense like a fish with a hook in its jaw.

I started to say something, because the silence ached too much. His hand came down hard over my mouth. With a shove, he steered and jostled me backwards until shadows cut off the moon and I banged my elbow landing up against a tree trunk.

He took his hand away and replaced it with his mouth.

It wasn't like before. It wasn't slow. He was thin and dark and burning up, feverish and bitter-tasting, grinding against me and pretty much gagging me with his tongue. My back scraped up and down the tree bark as he rubbed off against me, hard, short thrusts of his hips, as if in punishment. The branches forked overhead, and the stars misted above my slipping-down glasses. I had Nigel's blood on me. It was on Snape now, too. The reek of burnt fur surrounded us, although most of the stench had been blown downwind.

I was on the verge of tears. My arm hurt. My heart hurt. I didn't want to deal with this shite. I wanted him _off_ me.

Having punished me with the pressure of his tongue and groin, Snape suddenly bit my lip and pulled away, and that was—I don't know what, but that did it. He stepped back, and cold air slapped away his heat. Then he was turning, he was going to Disapparate, and I—

I yanked so hard I pulled him off-balance. He practically fell on top of me, and for a second I thought he was going to punch me in the groin. But then he caught on to the fact that I wasn't fighting and pinned me in a flash. We struggled, and he hoisted me up against the tree. Christ, I was panting for it. I just wanted to climb him, climb higher, leave that place of death and get into the sky. But I couldn't do that without letting go of him and, no. Just no. Not unless he came with me.

Damn it, it wasn't enough. I needed—I didn't _know_ what I needed.

The smell of damp wood and trampled grass, the shifting, elusive tang of potion fumes: not enough. The crushing, smothering, sexual heat holding me upright, Snape's angry mouth leaving wet marks, the harsh scrape of breath through his nostrils: not enough. I burrowed into the chill folds of his robes, as if he weren't already slamming me into the rough wood, as if I weren't already going to have friction burns all down my back. He has a long grip, and his hands that night were greedy and restless, all over me, all over, not letting go.

He didn't say anything, but the brutality of his touch made it clear: _You're alive_. Teeth bared, arms tense, and cock driven by panic, I insisted: _Show me, you fucker, show me_, my legs bracketing his hips. Our mouths shredded speech into wordless sucking and panting, and for a few seconds it was nothing but squirm and thrust and grunt.

It was just us, the owls, the snowy hills, a million stars, my dead partner, a dying werewolf, and this overwhelming sense that I _needed_ something and Snape was there to provide it. I swear I would have fucked him right then, right in the shadow of that tree, even though it was so wrong it bordered on madness.

The air cracked.

Cracked again.

Cracked a third time as Snape Disapparated. Just like that, he vanished without even taking his tongue from my mouth. His heel-spin of Apparition half-threw me out from under the tree.

Standing across from me were two—_crack!_—three, make that four Aurors, wands poised. The air spat magic. Someone shouted. Someone else cast a searchlight Lumos, and I covered my eyes against the glare.

Saved. Not sure from what.

Myself, obviously.

I spilled face-forward into the grass as if hit with a Jelly-Legs Jinx, barely managing to catch myself on my hands and knees, shuddering, retching, my cock screaming with frustration and my stomach about to lose its battle for self-respect.

Escorted back to the Ministry, I filled Kingsley in on everything I could remember. Everything except the identity of the mysterious wizard who'd come to my aid and what the hell I'd been doing under that tree. My superiors checked my wand for evidence of the Incendius curse, took Nigel's body to St. Mungo's and the werewolf into custody, and granted me a brief leave of absence.

I wanted to be the one to tell Nige's partner. Request denied.

It was two days before I was able to look Ginny in the face without my body locking up in a mortified flinch.

The whole time, I beat my head against the obvious questions: how had the bastard known where to find me? Easy one, I guess. The spell he'd cast back in the Room of Requirement—that had to be it. But why did he come at all, when it put him in mortal danger? Why, after two years? And why the fuck wouldn't he speak to me?

I didn't say one bloody word to myself about the kissing thing. I knew better. Next time—Merlin forbid there was a next time—I'd be absolutely sodding sure I didn't kiss back.

They never found out who was responsible for the ambush.

The werewolf didn't make it. The reversion to human form was too much for her, and by morning she was dead in her cage.

Fucking _hell_.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

xxxxx

The Apparition coordinates for the prison are way north, out by the coast. Storminess, solitude, that sort of thing. The waves swell and smash on the rocks a shocking distance below. Silvery-grey, lots of froth. The hissing, thundering noises are nerve-wracking, like cauldrons blowing up. The cliff actually shakes. Stand too near the edge and the spray will bloody well soak you. This far north, the weather's a total crapshoot, the cloud cover so thick half the time I wouldn't want to fly my broom through it. Today, it's blue enough to peel your eyeballs.

The entrance is at the south wall of the cliff. The waves make it necessary to shout, and between crashes there's still the hiss of foam racing up the shore. The dark rock's got white veins hidden all over. When the sun hits, the whole cliff breaks out in sparkles. Scrubby little plants and lacy things with long, dangly stems droop out of the cracks, fluttering in the wind. We Apparate down to the beach and crunch over. Tiny carved pixie faces crust the rock, leering gargoyles peeking out from under the leaves. They're all over the place, dripping moisture. Like barnacles, only with eyes.

An inconspicuous door appears. First time around, I was kind of expecting something more imposing, brass-bound and stained like a wine cask, "Abandon All Hope" scrawled across the top. It's actually pretty small. Del gives me a look and lifts the knocker: silver flowers, intertwined. Lilies, I think. Before it hits the plate, the door swings open and a house elf in a dark-blue robe bows us in.

"Scrappy is pleased to be seeing you again, Harry Potter," he squeaks, very dignified. No fawning or overexcitement here. A belt of pebbles hangs at his waist. Not something I usually think of house elves as having—waists, I mean. He looks like a pint-sized monk in a cassock. At his hip a ring of keys barely makes a sound; on Dobby they would have jangled like crazy.

"Aurors is to follow Scrappy. Warden Bulle and Secretary Keene is expecting you."

Good. I've been looking forward to this.

Last time, Bulle's spotty, supercilious clerk did most of the talking. Del kept a professionally straight face, but I think I may have grimaced more than once, because the Warden gave me the most quelling look I've received since Hogwarts. We talked specs and statistics, cell dimensions and availability, kitchen arrangements, proposed staffing, architectural soundness (a big-ticket item considering that Azkaban pretty much fell to pieces and the public's having nightmares about escaped Death Eaters), and so forth. We got ushered into a room stuffed with affidavits, proofs, ingredients lists, pledges of liability insurance. Important stuff, but yawn-worthy next to the real thing.

Today we get the tour.

Bulle takes the lead, Keene points out items of interest, me and Del exchange glances. Now and then a dull boom reaches us from the sea. We're in some inaccessible third floor corridor, totally turned around. Getting lost here would be easy and getting out impossible. Lots of curving and twisting about. Tunnels carved right into the cliff, but it feels more like—I don't know, a museum? Not sure I've ever been in one to compare. Sinuous and marble-like, is what I mean. Our footsteps clatter, hit the walls and fly back to us, just like the halls at Hogwarts. The echoes cover Del's whisper when she leans toward me, her eyes on the mosaic patterns that flow along both sides, twining around the cell doors, never stopping.

"This facility's fucking beautiful, you notice? A disgrace, you ask me. Why in Merlin's name would someone waste magic and money on an underground palace designed to lock up convicts?"

I've asked myself that, too. Because it's the first thing to hit you once the door clangs shut: the elegance, the obvious attempt to tart up the interior. If it wasn't meant to hold Dark wizards and other criminal types, maybe it wouldn't be so odd. But it's a contradiction in terms, and that usually means somebody's hiding something. Not necessarily something bad, but it's an auror's job to distinguish truth from glamour.

That's part of why I like it. The prison, I mean.

Ahead of us, Warden Bulle does one of his weird fluid moves, pivoting on his heel. For a bloke his age, he's awfully smooth. That word again: sinuous. Not surprising, since this place was built to his specifications. He squares his chin—well, his whole face is square, really strong bone structure, like a picture frame. All he does is stand still, watching. That thing with his chin might be useful to note, just in case it means he's prepping for a lie. His glance skips past me and nails Del. After our first introduction, when I thought he was going to order me tossed down a stairwell, he apparently decided to settle for treating me as a human dust mote instead. He blinks just a second too long every time our eyes meet, like he's trying to wash out the sight of me.

"Am I to understand you intend to lodge a complaint against my sense of style, Auror," the Warden pauses so slightly you could miss it, except that he makes sure we don't, "Biggerstaff?"

High, crisp voice, a bit uppercrust, kind of flutey on the vowels. I'd tag him as a pureblood, although I'm not sure that's relevant. He's got Muggleborns working for him, after all.

He's another one of the things I like. I could use a challenge right now, and he's it.

Del hates the name Delphinium as much as Tonks ever hated being called Nymphadora, but she's kind of helpless against it since her last name's worse by a mile. And unless you want to come across as a professional nanny, it's just not on to go around asking people to call you "Auror Del."

"No, sir," she says. "Just remarking on the unique features of your design."

He glances over at the mosaics, and—blow me, it's like they move. Like shadowlight glitters over the wall just then, so the individual tiles change colour. Could be an optical illusion, I suppose.

Twenty galleons says it's magic.

Warden Bulle's white moustache hides the sharp corners of his mouth, so I can't tell whether he's smiling. I think he is, though. Probably at our expense.

Strictly speaking, our host's courting a hex. I didn't twig at first, but he's the reason I had that dream the other night. Waking up with a stiff prick between my legs? Sort of a dead giveaway. Because that's what he _is_, right? That combination of authority and arrogance, the lid banged down tight, but under all that coldness there's something seething at the bottom. No wonder it stirred up memories of Snape. They're the same type, if Snape could ever be said to have a type. This bloke's just a few rungs up the social ladder.

Ever since we arrived with our Ministry-monogrammed robes and our credentials proving we're legit, Hieronymus Bulle, Warden of the Catacombs, has been walking a very fine attitude line. He's stuck to it so far, but I keep waiting for him to fall off. Right away, his refusal to shake hands and his curt nod conveyed, _I don't want you here._ When he led us into the main corridor, the set of his shoulders spelled out: _Go away and never darken my door again_. His grey hair's gone partly white, which gives him a snowy-owl effect. He's a barbershop regular or else he's got a natural wave, because—maybe it sounds mental to imply that someone can sneer with their hair, but that rich-man's flip practically gives us the finger.

Up to this point he hasn't spoken one word to me and barely three to Del, and I don't know why he's acting like we've brought dragon pox into his sparkly dungeon. Kingsley Owled him in advance, all fair and aboveboard, letting him know the date and time we'd be Apparating in for our follow-up inspection. If he expects the Ministry to hand its convicts over to his underground lockbox, he'd bloody well better cooperate. Starting with the explanation he failed to give us the last time.

The corridors are glossy brownish-grey, as if the water that drenches the cliff outside has somehow got trapped under the surface. The mosaics are pebble-sized, flashy and colourful. Most of the bits are gemstone-polished, amber and ruby and cloudy emerald, with black strings of glitter bubbling through like oil slicks. It's a funny rainbow effect. The patterns make no sense. I keep checking, and sure enough, the colours change. Light ripples to dark and back again. Sometimes it runs in the opposite direction.

The Warden doesn't strike me as the sort of wizard who enjoys pretty stuff for its own sake. These mosaics have a point, and I want to know what they're doing here. Nudging Del to give her a heads-up, I stroll over to the righthand wall and slide my palm along the bumpy river of stones. Just as I expected, a pulse of magic flashes against my skin.

A few steps ahead, where Solomon Keene prattles on about enforced education and prisoner counselling, enjoying the sound of his own snobbish voice, Warden Bulle emits a furious hiss. Keene boggles as the Warden swings around. His glare has a definite impact on the pebbled bits, because the colours surge and the magic heats against my hand.

I keep stroking the mosaic, intrigued by his response. "Sorry. Is there some reason I shouldn't touch these?"

Keene hurries to butt in, "They're the magical component to our integrated security system, Auror Potter. We haven't warded them yet because we're still forging the different levels of the prison into a single unit. The structural balance depends on precise calibration, so if you would kindly refrain from fondling them?"

Fondling. What a self-satisfied git. I shrug. "Sure thing."

Warden Bulle inclines his head slightly. "Thank you, Mr. Keene." His uffish protégé perks right up, like he's just been offered a dog treat.

We walk on, past high, barred alcoves shining with perpetual Lumos. At one point the Warden angles his square face toward his clerk, but his pale eye, disdainful and undeceived, glints at me over his shoulder. He smoothes his moustache, and for a moment his profile grows really sly and stab-you-in-the-dark. What the hell? When he's facing forward again, Del shoots me a, "Whoo, boy," look, and we shake our heads.

Keene casts an unlatching spell and leads us into one of the cells. No mosaics here. The room's the size of a cheap bedsitter, tiny but stark. Spotless. No punishing cold, no dampness, no despair-inducing soul-suckers. The only hint of correctional intent strikes me at first as the sort of outrageous luxury to make law enforcement cry foul: an enchanted window that brims and swirls with a long view of the sea.

But then I think, huh. Anyone cooped up here for any length of time will either be mesmerised by the wild and restless water pounding against the glass or tormented by a horizon he can't reach. For some prisoners it will be as addictive as the Mirror of Erised, and as difficult to turn away from to face the real world. Eeriest of all, the whoosh of the waves drains through the room over and over, each sigh more mournful than the one before.

Impressed despite myself, I glance at our host. His eyes are fixed on the billowing water, his moustache crimped in what I've already decided is his private version of a smile.

He catches me staring, and for a minute it's like wands-out between us, even though he doesn't pull his and I don't point mine. We look each other over with intent, half-hostile, half-daring, complete with a full-body eye-flick up and down to assess the goods, like we're in some pick-up club and neither one of us is willing to make the first move. Then the Warden lowers his lids over his sharp eyes for that disdainful extra second, as if shuddering at the offence to his good taste. Merlin, that's annoying.

A line of spray spatters the glass.

Before I make an arse of myself, Del says, "This is all very promising, sir. I can assure you we'll report that your facility represents an advance over our previous approach to incarceration. But we still haven't addressed the core issue."

I'm glad Bulle's looking at her and not at me when he ices over with angry authority. "It is not an 'advance,' Auror Biggerstaff. I expect the Catacombs to do nothing less than revolutionise our world's outmoded and grotesquely unethical approach to prison organisation."

"Right," I say, relieved at the change of subject. I'm a bit embarrassed to be acting so thin-skinned in front of Del. "That little matter of making the prisoners drink potions to suppress their magic. Not dehumanising at all. Really, I don't know why we didn't think of it first."

The Warden ignores me in favour of barking, "Scrappy," and when the house elf pops into view, says, "Would you kindly inform Dr. Catesby that we're ready for her? Have her meet our guests in the top-floor corridor near the archives."

The elf bows and vanishes. Keene locks the cell as we exit, even though no one's inside. He leads us toward a stairwell, but the Warden lingers behind. I stop and fold my arms.

"Auror Potter?" prompts Keene, and glances past me at his superior. "I imagine Warden Bulle will catch up with us in his own good time." He waits a few beats before adding, "The stairs are over here. This way, please."

I can't really give a reason for disobeying, so I follow. Without comment, Del fishes out a Hindsight mirror in a face-powder compact and hands it to me, and I nearly walk into a wall watching Warden Bulle trail his fingers along the mosaics. Then he stops and spreads his whole hand flat on one part of the design. He smiles knowingly, as if he has no doubt I'm watching, just one half of his mouth crooking his moustache into an accent mark. His face in the mirror is tilted down, like he's peering out from behind something. Like he used to have long hair and he still thinks—

My stomach jumps.

White light sifts through Bulle's fingers, and suddenly he's not in the hallway.

It's like somebody grabbed me by the bollocks. My body reacting ahead of my brain, I lurch around. Del nicks the compact out of my hand. She clips it shut in the act of squirreling it away, and still manages to steady me before I go sprawling out on the steps up to the next level. Not half embarrassing, because I'm the senior Auror here. She mutters, "Right-o, Potter, spill," but I put her off with a sideways eye-twitch. We'll compare notes later.

Keeping mum, we hustle like naughty little beggars to catch up, our footsteps ricocheting with the force of an Apparition crack, the kind that should have announced Bulle's disappearance, and didn't.

Solomon Keene doesn't say a word, just glares, then ascends the carved stone steps ahead of us, looking profoundly put-upon. His hair falls in his eyes and he leaves it there, sulking. I wouldn't blame him for thinking he's been saddled with the Simpleton Twins. Well, except that Del is five inches taller and five times darker than me, and I'm the one who's been breaking out in prattish behaviour and acting brassed off.

The walls glisten up and around in smooth spirals, slick as taffy, dark and cool. The sea pounds like military cannon through stone. We pass a steady bustle of house elves as we climb.

It's really bloody hard not to reach out and run my hand along the mosaics. On the top floor, they ribbon along beside us, unreadable, saturated with magic, weaving the whole prison together.

This time as we clatter in Keene's wake, I watch. Sure enough, at certain points in the stream of glimmering chips and jumbled-together pebbles, there's a repeating motif. A circle of black, studded with white flakes of various sizes, randomly arranged.

Before I can sidle over to check their magical signature, a surprised voice says, "Harry?" and I have to turn around. Looking gloomy, Solomon Keene flips his hair out of his eyes and introduces us to the prison's Head of Mental and Magical Reintegration. A woman with short, butter-yellow hair grasps my hand, and suddenly I see a Ravenclaw, and memories of the last battle come rushing up. Even though I didn't catch her name, I know I know her. She smiles and repeats, "Illyria Catesby," and all of a sudden we start chattering away like long-lost friends, about Hogwarts, about the past, about what it was like during the year of rebuilding, about her job and my job and who's married and who's in disgrace—

I forget Hieronymus Bulle and his odd smirk and that excited clench in my groin; I don't forget the way he vanished by touching the make-believe stars. Doesn't matter. I'm not done with him yet. I'll be back.

xxxxx

By the time I get home, Molly's already there, welcoming and untidy. I give everyone a kiss, hers on the cheek and Ginny on the lips, Al on the top of his head and Jamie in the blurry air behind him. My hyperactive eldest son is staggering around the sitting room wielding a dry stick he picked up outside, throwing curses at everything in sight. All the photos and paintings propped and hung and beaming from walls and mantelpieces, mostly Weasleys and Prewitts, applaud when he pretend-Crucios our silly, yippety crup.

I feel ten times better than I did this morning. Not wanting my mood spoiled, I toe my shoes off, Levitate a glass of Ogden's to my study, then have a tug-of-war with Molly over who gets to hold Al. As if I'm boneheaded and haven't already learned from our first child, Molly spends five minutes instructing me in the care and cuddling of babies. I nod until my head nearly falls off, then pad upstairs to rock Al back to sleep.

Ginny snuggles up to me in bed that night, taking me completely off guard. She climbs on top, and it's good. We both need it, I think. I try to ignore the sneaking suspicion that she's doing this because her mum said it was the wifely thing to do. Because really, it's better than not doing it at all.

No dreams, either, but when I wake up I've got that funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, all the way down between my thighs. Like my penis is having a dream without me, or maybe trying to tell me something.

I lie there spread out on our wide, cool bed, sun like a perfect blade of white through the windows, having hazy thoughts about starry mosaics and leisurely wanks until I'm late and have to skive off breakfast. As I dash out the door, Ginny tosses me a squirt-bottle full of steaming-hot coffee that I can sip as I fly. "See you, love!" we both shout, and then I'm off.

I could save time by Apparating or taking the Floo, but then I'd miss being outside. Flying's a way of breaking every single bond that ties me to earth. I love the wind fluttering and biting at my face, carving squint wrinkles. I love the sky and the silence and being alone, seeing everything from so high up.

George's broom—the Icarus High-Flyer number something-or-other—swerves suddenly and plunges, trying to throw me off. Swearing, I get us back on course and slap it across its broom-waxed nose. Then I have to act fast and _Accio_ my plummeting caffeine fix before some poor sod down below gets offed by a coffee-filled asteroid.

xxxxx

"It's missing an ingredient," Kingsley announces in a locked-door convo two days later.

I snort—colour me shocked—and Del sighs and massages the back of her neck. Let's face it, Hieronymus Bulle's got a rotten case of haughtier-than-thou, and if his clerk's not a Slytherin, I'll hand Dung Fletcher the key to my Gringotts vault and let him roll around in the Galleons naked.

I say as much, and Del cuts me off. "I don't think Dr. Catesby would be an accomplice to fraud."

Dr. Catesby's the one who spelled us a duplicate copy of the magic-suppressing formula, the copy Del and I submitted along with our joint report on the Catacombs. I didn't say so at the time, but I thought it seemed too easy. Dr. Catesby filled us in on the background theory, while admitting she has zero expertise in anything potions-related. Not her field. Her role's more in overseeing rehabilitation, using the induced helplessness of the prisoners as an opportunity to educate them. She's in charge of classroom schedules and imported lecturers and therapeutic activities and similar Mugglish stuff. Sounds like a daycare centre, frankly.

Then she handed over a copy of this massive fucking potions breakthrough, just like that. We punted it to Kingsley first thing, and he memo'd it straight away to the Ministry's in-house potions experts with a high-priority binding charm.

For Merlin's sake, of _course_ there's a missing ingredient. I could have told them that.

I'm about to point out that nobody implied fraud, but for once my mind gets the better of my mouth. Del's got the comfy seat and I've got the creaky ladder-back chair with the tiny lion-knobs that nibble your ears if you so much as slouch. Only she's the one sitting up straight as a lightning rod, like it's a throne not an overstuffed armchair.

I'd almost forgotten. I wasn't the only one surprised during our visit. Turns out Dr. Catesby took her advanced degree in Therapeutic Hybrid Evaluative Methods (an acronym that's either really tongue-in-cheek or really dumb) under Dr. Delilah Ridinghope, who just happens to be Del's ex. I mean Delphinium's ex. Yeah, they used to be known as "the Double Dels," but that's before Dr. Del, who's twice _my_ Del's age, dumped her, and I don't know all the particulars, but if I remember correctly it was for a younger woman.

Undercurrents overcharge the air between us—Merlin, do I know this from all the not-arguing I do with Ginny—because Del can guess exactly what's parading through my head and I reckon I'm about three potential indiscretions away from being on her shit list. Kingsley contemplates our twitchy faces and then says, "It's not fraud. It's not even illegal. Suspicious as hell, I'll grant you, but we've no evidence of Dark Arts usage at this point. Aside from the concealed key to its preparation, which it may be within their rights to withhold—stow your objections, Harry, I'm still researching precedents—the mere existence of this potion is—"

He puts his elbows on the desk and rubs his fingertips against each other. "Well, let's just say there will be political fall-out. We don't have much choice—we can't keep farming out prisoners. But the Minister requests that for the time being we keep this strictly confidential. Which is why… "

He Summons the case file and riffles the pages. "We Owled the unsigned contract back to Warden Bulle with an inserted codicil and an ultimatum. This morning a house elf delivered his sealed agreement. The upshot is, I've got the authority to place a special liaison in the Catacombs, an agent who oversees the experimental application of this potion and reports his findings directly to me."

_Brilliant_. I come to attention so fiercely I almost knock my chair over backwards. Del's eyes flare for a second, then she folds her hands in her lap and examines them. In a contest between us, she knows who'll get the job.

I hold my breath. I fucking hoped Kingsley would force the issue.

"Auror Potter." There's a small collection of magical artefacts lined up across the front edge of Kingsley's desk, all related in some way to Muggle superstitions. He tickles a worn rabbit's foot, and its scuffed pads curl. "I take it from the hungry-werewolf look on your face that you'd like to apply for this assignment?"

"Uh." The werewolf remark throws me. Del flicks me a "well done on ya" look and props her chin on her fist, smiling. "If it doesn't conflict with any other lifesaving projects you've got slated for me, sir." I try not to sound too disrespectful. Or desperate.

He snorts, and so does Del, and the rabbit's paw kicks suddenly into the air. It somersaults and lands neatly in the palm of Kingsley's hand. He rubs a thumb over its fur. For luck, isn't it?

"Clear your appointment calendar of any superhero hijinks, in that case. Paperwork on my desk in an hour." Kingsley leans back and tugs on the gold hoop in his ear. Then he sets the rabbit's paw back on his desk and watches it teeter upright. It hops timidly onto the case folder. "It's your baby now—sorry, that would be an inappropriate word under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Your project, I mean." He lays his free hand across his stomach; he's been putting on weight this past year, and I totally understand why, even though I've gone in the other direction. If I ever return to fieldwork, I'll have to train like blazes. "Speaking of which, how's the new addition to the family?"

"A bundle of joy," I say, grinning. "Seriously. But my firstborn makes up for it. Got a miniature demon on our hands there."

Kingsley nods dubiously. He's never married, as far as I know, and I'm pretty sure from the thoughtful way he pets the rabbit's foot that he's congratulating himself right now on not having kids. "Just to be clear, Potter. One whiff of Dark magic in relation to that place, and you fly your arse out of there."

"I'm not an idiot, sir." I don't know where that comes from. The dream about Snape, I suppose. It always stirs up memories of his voice, and with his voice come the shadows of his insults.

But my boss just nods at me indulgently, and bugger. I don't know why it thrills me so much. But after being deskbound for bloody ages, I understand how Buckbeak must have felt, getting sprung from that attic.

I'm in.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

xxxxx

For weeks after the ambush, I had nightmares about the charred werewolf and the crunching sound of Nigel's skull. Just like I still burst from sleep sometimes, my face pressed into the sweat-soaked pillow, the past clinging like cobwebs, thick with shadows and running feet and curse lights. The echo of Hermione screaming and the earthquake rumble of Hogwarts cracking open and crashing to the ground. Staring faces. Blood-streaked hands. Perhaps worst of all, Dumbledore's voice whispering _Harry, you failed. Tom isn't dead_. I learned to get up after one of those dreams, and if Ginny was there, leave her sleeping. I'd slip away to another room, cast a Silencing spell, turn on the telly, and sit thinking—or if I could help it, not thinking—until the sun came up.

Once or twice, heading back to my office through the Ministry corridors, I caught the stench of singed fur on my hands. Both times I was alone, and my chest tightened and my sinuses ached as if I'd caught cold. Or been crying. Which I wasn't. I never did. Over Nigel, I mean. Although maybe I should have. A quick _Tergeo_ before someone found me standing in the hallway scowling at my hands, and I got on with my life. Because that's what you do.

Or else … or else I had dreams about Snape. About this dark, ravenous figure pinning me, heat radiating through the wind-chilled wool of his robes, his taste bitter as quinine, me swallowing and swallowing until stars burst behind my eyes.

The sensation of being overwhelmed, suspended, crushed between the sky and a pair of grasping hands, a greedy tongue, the hard knot of arousal grinding between my thighs—sod it, I gave up and wanked. Not because I wanted _Snape_, Merlin forbid. The memory of him rubbing up against me, the closeness of his face, his skin cold against my cheek and his tongue filling my mouth, the heat so shocking it lit a fuse that wormed its way down between my legs, the goosepimpling touch of his hand sliding up to grip my hair—

No. I didn't want that. It was too strange for words. There was no reason for him to kiss me, after years of treating me like crap, someone he despised simply for existing. And for me to grab on and buck up against him the way I had was absolutely mental. There was nothing about Snape I wanted. Desire—that was for Ginny. I couldn't explain what had happened with Snape, except that I was sure it had to do with my last-minute rescue from ending up a screaming heap of bones. From lying next to Nigel with my face chewed off.

Because that's all that would be left of me now. If Snape hadn't come.

So it was—call it temporary insanity. Not wanting. It couldn't be. Not _him_. Fuck it, everything about that night had been horrible, and I hoped to God I never saw him again.

It's just, my cock had a long memory. It kept flashing back to that white-hot point, curtained under the trees but visible to the stars.

I got it out of my system, all right? No big deal. There was nothing I could do about it, unless I wanted to tell the Ministry that Snape was alive.

Eight months later the bastard kissed me again, and I was bloody lucky he did.

I was weekending in the North Country, Muggle-style. Cottage rental, green hills and well-trodden footpaths, out for a nice walk the way you do, lollygagging through the mild afternoon. I landed on the track above Cotterby Scar, wildflowers on the upward slope and the limestone drop overgrown and rugged below. Making sure no one else was about, I Apparated down to the waterside, sliding a bit on the wet grass. It had rained for three days solid that week, and the river was swollen and noisy. Exhilarating, really. I had no plans other than to follow the Swale downstream to the nearest village, admiring various waterfalls along the way. Then I'd hike over to the East Gill Force and find a dry spot to unpack my lunch. The cottage had a fireplace and an iron bathtub, so I could Apparate back and warm up any time I tired of walking.

The ground was mucky, and the dripping ash and elm trees rustled in the rain-cooled air. So amazingly peaceful. Safe as houses and all that. Yeah, right. As if I'd learned nothing from the last twenty years.

Perfect weather for a picnic, I'll give it that: birds swooping from their nests, water foaming over rocks, bread and berries and a bottle of ale stowed in my knapsack. Hermione was off revising her law courses, as usual, and Ron was sticking with George, as usual—the family made an effort to pop in a sub when Ron needed a break, but George could be a right bastard to his family since Fred died. Sometimes even Molly couldn't take his mouth.

Ginny had plans to Floo into Ottery St. Catchpole from Quidditch practice next day and then join me at the cottage. I looked forward to the two of us being quiet together. Partly because Ginny was still learning that my being quiet didn't mean anything. And by "anything," I mean angry or upset. When I sat at the family table, grinning and listening rather than diving in, it was because I wasn't naturally boisterous like her brothers. I didn't need to be loud and constantly trading quips. Sometimes I enjoyed simply sitting on my own.

After the war ended, I spent as much time with Ron and Hermione as I could, but they were together now and needed privacy.

So did we, I guess.

It was still a little hard to believe that I was … normal now. That I could do normal things. I made a point of dropping in to see Teddy whenever possible. I met Hermione's parents, and we got along great. Luna sent me funny postcards showing pictures of all the different countries she visited. I heard from someone that Neville was starting an apprenticeship with Professor Sprout. Wherever I went, I bumped into people who knew me, even if I didn't know them. Ron and I had drinks at the pub most weeks, and sometimes Hermione or George joined us there, but no matter what, total strangers would come up to our table and shake my hand or try to sell me something or give me something or insist I attend board meetings or fund raisers or commemorative events.

I was used to being one-third of a life-saving friendship, sort of a—a three-part rune that spelled _loyalty_, and no Dark Lord or Death Eater in the world could divide us. Now I had to let that go and learn to be half of a couple. Hanging out as a foursome was fun, but—I don't know. Something didn't gel. Ginny and I ended up playing a tonne of Quidditch together. The more time passed, though, the more I preferred to relax at home, especially once I started taking field assignments. Ginny—well, she was accustomed to the Burrow's tumult. She'd been brought up with bickering and pranking and lots of family outings.

Maybe I was a bit less exciting than she expected, and maybe I missed Ron and Hermione more than I let on.

Never mind. Tomorrow we'd wander around and climb the fells and hold hands and have as much sex as we wanted, and just be ourselves.

Really, I couldn't have asked for a better day.

Until a Body-Bind spell hit me in the back.

I had one second to think _Shite_. Then a bruising kick in the arse pitched me in the river. So much for my Auror training. I hit the bank shoulder-first and toppled sideways with a splash. I landed face-up, the river water slopping over my neck and cheeks. It stung. The knapsack cushioned my back a bit, but the cold soaked right through my jumper and flowed up inside my trouser legs, like runoff down a pipe. My first instinct was to see who'd cursed me, but my eyes were fixed in one direction and wouldn't move.

I started to float away from shore, slowly at first, scraping over the shallows, then picking up speed. The current spun me partway around, and the sky revolved in a sickening way. My face went under, then came up again, tingling with shock. I couldn't even gasp. Water beaded on my glasses. Good thing my mouth was shut when the _Petrificus_ caught me or the water would have poured right down my throat.

The river, Merlin, how it burned. It was colder than the lake in the Forest of Dean, really painfully freezing, like molten ice. And roaring. Unlike the lake, it wasn't calm. Partway out from the bank, it snatched me up, dragged and thrust me along, rolling and bumping me over and under. The surging and slamming scared the crap out of me. The cold was agonising, the Body-Bind sheer torture.

Cursed rigid, I couldn't yell for help. Couldn't see where I was going, couldn't keep myself afloat, couldn't stop myself whirling headlong into the rocks that split the frothing current. Couldn't _breathe_. The boiling, gurgling rush tossed me this way and that, drove me against every stone in the riverbed, seethed and sucked me under, dunked me deep and spat me out. I was seared with cold, soggy, scuffed and bleeding, tumbled over and over as the water fled downstream. Flash of sky, swirl of liquid, flash of sky, faceful of water, sky, spray, a suffocating, bubbling wave forcing its way up my nose. Air, oh fuck, I needed air, I needed it _now_, where was it? There, up there, unreachable, a ripple of daylight dabbling at the surface, disappearing as the river spilled onward and a churning, roaring blanket of water crashed down like a wall, choking and cold.

I smashed off something massive, a boulder maybe, and screamed inside, unable to move a muscle. The crack to my head stunned me, and the current carried me off to the next collision. My whole body felt waterlogged, ice-blue, bruised head to foot, my sodden Muggle clothing rubbing me raw. But I was in there, aware every second of what was happening to me. The nonstop roar almost drove me mad, the push and sway of the water, a weight, a force, over me, under me, yellowish-green with a white, frothing head. The constant pounding and sloshing were utterly brutal. I couldn't think.

I skidded right to the edge of losing it. My mind, I mean. Not even Voldemort had been able to do that. I rolled facedown, my cheeks and forearms bumping and scraping, gashed open on underwater rocks. My sinuses were on fire, totally plugged up. Greenish-black things kept swimming over me. I thought at first they were snakes, but they were probably weeds. I couldn't tell. My glasses had broken off, but it's not like I could see more than quick glimpses anyway. Merlin, everything happened so fast. The world kept getting snatched away, a spinning kaleidoscope of water and sky.

Half-conscious, I almost missed how the river accelerated, its mindless roar shaking the inside of my head. Foam exploded wetly on all sides; water whipped across my face. Helpless, I hurtled forward, got jostled against the rocks, flipped over, and went flying.

For one second, I hung suspended in mid-air. Then a wave lurched over me, and together we swept off the falls. I spilled into the maelstrom, and the river thundered down on top of me.

I plunged underwater, straight into another world. It was as if someone had yanked curtains shut against the daylight, and I somersaulted in slow motion through a bone-chilling murk. I've had dreams like that. Of drifting in liquid silence. Up above, the water still thrashed violently, but it was no longer deafening. Its assault stayed on the surface, far away. Only the vibration of it filtered down, stirring the depths.

The lake was like a cave. A freezing cave. Sunlight speared the gloom, startling me as I rippled through bars of brightness. The rocks on the bottom wobbled, distorted by my passing. I spun toward them, coasting into shadow. My eardrums throbbed. Deeper here. Sluggish. The water had stopped brawling. Dark, so dark, like the lake in the woods where the sword had been hidden. No one would ever find me. The water I'd swallowed swamped my chest, a solid block. I was dimly aware of a chipped front tooth, and blood trailing out my nose. Every bit of me felt distended with pressure, and I thought my eyeballs were going to burst.

Part of me kept trying to reach out for help. Save me, Ron! Hermione, help me! We'd survived Voldemort, damn it. We'd _won_. But I sank, and the water around me darkened. _Not fair, not fair_. I couldn't die now, I couldn't, not like this. It hurt so fucking much. I'd never see Ron and Hermione again. More than anything I wanted to say goodbye. How could I leave them? We'd survived the war together. I was going to have a family.

Sightless, alone, far from everyone, I bumped sideways amongst weeds and muck, stiff and silent at the bottom of a lake.

It all drained away. My whole life dwindled to a sputtering _please not now not fair_, a random jumble of pictures, _Ron Hermione_, noisy and bright, shrinking to a desperate thread _Snape_ one tiny mindless dot like the spark _please_ at the end of a blackened wick.

Just before the spark went out, something hauled me backward through the swirling water, so fast that bubbles sputtered in my wake. The centre of the pool erupted like a geyser, heaving me up in wet, splashing circles, and a crack of magic spat me ashore.

I landed with a thud. Well, a squelch. The ground was rockhard, the sky blinding. Didn't matter. I still couldn't breathe.

_Finite Incantatem_ whipped through me, setting off spasms. No more _Petrificus_, thank fuck. My sopping clothes got ripped clear and cast aside. Everything went aching and freezing and limp. My sodding _teeth_ hurt. A flurry of black blotted out the light and I was shoved roughly onto my stomach.

I closed my eyes—like raking the tines of a fork down both eyeballs, but still a relief. I just lay there, drooling. Dying, I guess. I didn't care, as long as I didn't have to do it in the river.

A firm weight pressed my back. Oh God. I had to retch. Water squirted from my mouth, my nose, water everywhere. Gagging, I blacked out. Another tingle of magic, and my lungs cleared, snapping me back to life. Fuck. That _hurt_. Something hissed in my ear like a frustrated snake, and I got yanked onto my back again. My arms and legs flopped. Those hands, bearing down. Then smooth, clean fingers worked my mouth open and slid inside, forcing my tongue out of the way. They were gone, and something else sealed around my lips—a mouth, fitted to mine, a gust of air, stale air, a warm breeze down my throat.

Not enough. Again, a sharp press, again that steady exhale that became my inhale. I coughed, and the mouth drew back before lowering over me again.

My whole body blazed with cold, my lips, my face, bruise-swollen and numb, burning with pain. The mouth covering mine was so incredibly warm, and the warmth so delicious, and holy Merlin, the feel of it feeding me air—I still dream about it sometimes. The hands on my chest, pulling me about. They forced me to open up. They made me live. _He_ made me, is what I'm trying to say.

Time stopped. It all narrowed down to one thing. A miracle, like sharing dragon's breath.

Then my rescuer pulled back, and my entire body screamed _Don't leave me here! Don't let me die!_

I forced my eyes open just a slit. Daylight scalded them, and they watered so much I couldn't see, but—sod it, I knew. I knew damned well who crouched over me. I had all the evidence I needed in the texture of his hair, the shape and taste of his mouth, the prominence of his bones. Blood-snotty water still leaked out my nose, but I swear to God I could _smell_ him.

The blurry slab above me was like one of the submerged white rocks that had loomed up from the shadows as I tumbled downstream. Around it hung two straggly curtains, shielding me from the sunlight.

Snape's hair. I loved it at that moment, lankness, blackness, greasiness, and all. It was the only colour that didn't hurt to look at.

I croaked, "Please," or tried to. I was naked and my whole body jerked, spasming with cold, and there was no way I could keep my hands off him. His black robes were the most wonderful thing I'd ever touched, soft and smouldering with heat. Too weak to do more than drape my arms around him, I held on while my muscles thawed against the fabric. As soon as I could feel blood beating in my extremities, I worked my way up Snape's shoulders and into his hair, hand over hand, trembling with exhaustion. His hair was like a revelation. I buried my fingers in it. Once under the thick strands, the cold knives in my bones finally started to lose their sharpness.

Snape stared down at me, waiting. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I could feel that look. _I will make you regret this_. I was too far gone to care. He hadn't called me names yet, or told me what a useless waste of space I was. Which was odd. No sneer of "What are you playing at, Potter?" It would have meant things were normal. Would have meant I was safe.

The silence changed all that. It left me reaching for things that weren't there and grabbing hold of things that were. I hadn't forgotten him kissing me, and—well, I wanted it now. I wanted him covering me. I didn't give a toss about being naked. Frankly I'd be happy never seeing my soaked and freezing clothes again. I wanted Snape and his robes enfolding my bare skin, wanted him blanketing me with his body heat. The more heat, the better. Wanted him breathing into my mouth. For the warmth. For a way to banish the river's noise still thundering through my head.

So I wouldn't call it a conscious decision. Exhausted, I hung around his neck. At first he resisted, or didn't understand, but then his head bowed beneath my weight. When his hair fluttered in the wind, I wadded it up—such a simple thing, the ability to move my fingers, but so fantastic—and steered him closer, hoping he'd take the hint before my strength gave out.

He didn't. Arsehole. So I braced myself and craned up until our lips just touched. Even that was enough to kindle a funny little zigzag of life in my stomach. Like a baby bird screaming _feed me_, I opened my mouth to beg. That was what finally did it. Even though my face was smashed up and it must have been as appealing as kissing an icecube, Snape made an impatient noise and slid into place as if he did this every day, nudging my lips further apart so he could ease his tongue inside.

Merlin, that was all I asked. I let my eyes slide shut as warmth blossomed in painful, lovely spots all up and down my body.

Snape remained kneeling, settling deeper into the kiss while managing not to lean on any of my bruises. I was pretty far gone, but I had no desire to Apparate home and find help. I was content to stay where I was, naked on the riverbank with Snape's hands and mouth to heal me.

God, I loved that kiss. I wouldn't have thought Snape capable of it, and a small part of my brain reckoned he'd found someone else to practise on since the last time we'd done this. It was velvety and careful, and the way he paid attention and kept it calm and searching made it feel like he was giving me a slow massage.

And there was something else about it, these little slips of emotion. I'd once attended a concert performance courtesy of a nice older member of the Ministry. It wasn't my sort of thing, so I did as much watching as I did listening. Some of the musicians, even the ones with violins under their chins, swayed and dipped their heads at certain moments, as if the intensity of the music overwhelmed their professional reserve. Some closed their eyes at particular notes or grimaced as though the perfection of all those sounds blending together was so blissful it hurt. It helped me to stop squirming in my seat and made me want to hear exactly what they were hearing.

Snape—he did that with me. These extra nudges, as if he couldn't help himself. A way of brushing his lips back and forth over mine with this half-drunk expression. Little pauses where our mouths barely touched, but the connection was at its most intense.

I started doing it, too. Because that's how it felt, like we were playing a duet. But instead of music, it was me being alive that we collaborated on, and it took both of us to produce the notes that reminded me how much I loved life. How sometimes it was so astonishing I didn't know whether to laugh or stand up and open my arms to the world.

So I was distracted. There was this whole warm landscape available to me, wrapped in smooth, sun-drenched blackness. It didn't register at first that my hands had gone exploring on their own. They traced the long passage of his spine absentmindedly, reaching down as far as they could. And I think—I'm not sure—no, I'm pretty sure—but I think they accidentally groped his arse.

Without warning, Snape rolled over, scooping me on top. The pain in my ribs broke my trance. I squawked. Merlin, I clawed at him and tried to scramble away. It felt a whole lot more awkward and exposed to be on top, flaunting my bare bum at the world. It also occurred to me, too late to do anything about it, that river rafters and hikers came down this way all the time. Well, fuck. Hopefully Snape had cast a spell to hide us from prying Muggle eyes.

Restraining me with an elbow, Snape dragged a fold of his robes over on top of us. The material spread out in a tide of black heat, super intense, almost burning. Sunlight seeped like a healing potion into the muscles of my back, and Merlin. That was all it took. After the terror and bruising and water torture, it was … indescribable. I stopped pretending I was going anywhere and just let myself sprawl all across his body. In fact, I pretty much melted all over him and let the sun do its job.

I reckon I lost a few minutes there. The heat penetrated right to my frozen bones, and everything tingled as if the ice in my veins had turned to steam. The river was boiling out of me. It was letting me go.

Then the bony cushion of Snape's body bent, lifting me with him, and I snapped awake.

"No. Wait." Bloody hell, my throat was raw. "Minute," I croaked feebly. "Stay a minute."

Muffled under his robes, Snape's heartbeat bounced off my forehead, deep and vibrating. I clung on, confused because now that I was more alert it really sank in who I'd been snogging. How desperate I'd been to kiss him. What the hell, Potter? Just shows how out of it I was. If someone else had saved me—Ron, for instance—the question of kissing would never have come up.

Well, too late now.

"Don't go. _Please_."

Silence. What was I supposed to do with that? He'd not spoken to me once, not once. Cripes, though. Maybe he couldn't. Was it possible Nagini had done for his voice? But I'd heard him cast _Obliviate_ in the Room of Requirement. Hadn't I? He'd left Ginny convinced I'd done a terrible thing. The stuff he'd said to me—or not said. Stuff I hadn't forgotten. His words in my mind. _Let me stay dead_.

Fuck, I couldn't make sense of it. I was so bloody tired.

Snape just sat there breathing in a keyed-up way, probably angry, holding my head against his chest. No arguments from me on that score, because I wasn't too keen on looking him in the face just then.

I was so certain he was about to tell me to get the hell off him and stop fucking around that when he lay back down again, pulling me with him, for a second I didn't know what to do. Then I realised I didn't need to do anything. I could stay where I was.

Lovely. I slipped right back into that haze of simmering heat and mindless surrender. Sure, I hurt all over, but the pain seemed to be concentrated over there, on the other side of some imaginary horizon. For now I could ignore it. It helped that I felt physically slack, supple, as if my bones were soft. Every time Snape budged or breathed, it sent an answering ripple from one end of me to the other. Heat above, heat below. One of my legs draped his, my shoeless foot hooked over his shin. His hand was still on my head, fingers twined in my hair.

I … well, I blame the sun and the shock. My dick got hard. Daydreaming, I shifted my hips, and well-being rolled up through me in a golden glow. It wasn't personal; it was more about just being alive, about sensation flowing back into my extremities. The hunger to feel _more_ alive pulsed inside me, steep and swelling.

I didn't realise at first I was rutting in slow motion against Snape's thigh. It was like nothing I did could possibly have consequences. Nothing was real, except for the fact that I was here, breathing.

Of course, some part of me still waited for Snape to jerk upright, snarl insults, and kick me back in the river. But it was almost like he didn't even notice. I rocked drowsily back and forth as if I were rocking myself to sleep, little tickles of pleasure running up and retreating between my legs.

My face was right against his neck, which put my nose where I'd never in a million years imagined putting it, smack in his hair. It had that warm animal smell hair gets, a kind of earthy richness from lying tangled in the sun, with undertones of the grass beneath us. Greasy, sure, but that just made the smell more intense. Smoky somehow. No doubt from slaving over a hot cauldron.

I buried my face in it.

Small poky bits jabbed at my stomach. Evidently Snape carried vials and notebooks and whatnot around with him, and his robes must have been lined with pockets. Sodding things. They were so distracting I fantasised about yanking his kit off to get them out of the way. But then Snape would be— Hmm. Hang on. Vague thoughts of sallow skin and black chest hair twitched inside me, and that warm golden feeling rose up again. Trying to leverage a bit more pressure, I rocked weakly and bent my knee. Snape shuddered, and his hand tightened in my hair. His other hand slid up inside my cocoon, and fingertips skimmed my ribs. Before I could decide what I thought about that, he swept the robe off and left me naked to the world.

Damn. Reprieve over, I reckoned. Now I'd get levitated to my feet. Or dumped on my arse. Then Snape would dust himself off with a smirk and Disapparate.

I lay still. The silence stretched, and Snape showed no signs of moving. The sunlight beat down, drugging my blood. I wondered what Snape would do if I melted all over his robes. Within minutes, I was positively roasted. The river's roar spilled by in the background, but I was safe, dry, my body incandescent and fantastically naked. The rising fever in my veins made me squirm, and I slowly went back to humping his thigh.

A second later, Snape's hand alighted on my back, cool against my burning skin. I felt the urge to kiss him again. I didn't have the strength to wank and raise my head at the same time, so I settled for panting into his neck, into the high, loose collar that covered his scars.

Carefully, the flat of his hand glided from my shoulder to the small of my back. At first I thought I was hallucinating, and the long, smooth stroke provoked a shiver in its passage over my skin. Snape had touched me before, sure, but never like this. Never with a trace of uncertainty in his fingers. Never with the sense that he was trying to be gentle.

Stupid with contentment, I rode back and forth, barely moving atop his body. In the dip below my tailbone, his nails dented my skin.

It came to me then that the thing rolling around under me, long and full, was Snape's cock. Snape's cock, and I was rubbing myself all over it.

He couldn't have been wearing pants; the heavy bulge moved too much. The pressure of his erection stirred a sleepy satisfaction inside me, the obvious wrongness just adding to my belief that I was dreaming. Because look, I was naked and Snape was being bizarrely nice to me, and we didn't even need to talk about it. I'd almost died, now here I was, and it felt incredibly wicked. Merlin, I wanted to thank him for that. I wanted my aching, lazy, grateful body to excite him the way it excited me.

I was so out of it the thought started making me maudlin, so I wiggled a bit to get the warm feeling back and dragged my hands up to clutch at his shoulders. And I pushed. With every thrust, oh God, I could feel the sweetness rise and subside, rise and subside, teasing the heat a little farther each time.

It was hypnotic and unreal. No urgency at all. I probably could have stayed there basking, breathing through my mouth and inhaling the fragrance of Snape's hair, enjoying the repeated flush of pleasure, cursing his lumpy pockets until the sun went down, in no hurry at all to get it over with.

I had no idea what Snape was thinking. As long as he let me keep doing what I was doing, I didn't give a toss. Then the hand in my hair slid down to my neck and the other smoothed its way up my arse. The cool tips of his fingers fit lightly into my crack.

I could have shaken him off. Would have, in my right mind. When I didn't, his hands tightened and slowly started to guide me, encouraging me to rub.

Neither of us said a word or let on that what we were doing was insane. After a few seconds, I picked up his rhythm. He rotated my hips, with little pushes at intervals, driving my dick against his leg.

By this point I was relaxed and wrung out, sweating madly, dazed by sun and bruises, stewing in the heat of Snape's robes and floating on sparks of almost-orgasm. The hand on my arse went away, and Snape's sleeve curtained my face for a moment. The curtain went down with his lowered arm. Sunlight stung my eyes. Without warning, a single wet fingertip insinuated itself between my arse cheeks and slid, cool and careful, inside my hole.

Whoa. Eyes shut, face smashed into his collar, I bucked against him in shock.

As he fingered me, so idle and lewd about violating my privacy he made it seem almost natural, my backside lifted up, and Snape hissed something I couldn't quite hear.

Bugger that. Come on. Let him whine and curse. Let him break his fucking silence. I wanted to hear him cry out in pleasure. For _me_. Because of _me_. I wanted to hear his dark, snarling voice whisper my name.

Reckless, I bit his neck. Or really, the fabric around his neck. Not hard, but Snape whined a little and rolled his head sideways to expose more throat. A queer feeling fluttered in my stomach, like pressing on a bruise. After Nagini's attack, I would've expected him to hate being touched there.

I worried mindlessly at the mouthful of collar, letting him feel my teeth. A harsh noise scraped out of him, a held-back sound ending in open-mouthed panting as he braced his feet and moved under me. Cradled together, we rocked like lunatics. I wiggled and strained, sweating on top of him, utterly _bursting_ with sun, throbbing madly around the thin finger tucked inside my arse. I hid my face in his hair and inhaled, inhaled, biting him, pushing back and forth and gasping, whimpering, cock against cock. The smell of sweat dizzied me. The smell of sex, of life. I could taste the sun in his clothes. His skin. The sweetness of crushed grass in his hair almost made me cry.

_Let me stay dead_.

No, damn it. I won't. Come back, Snape. For me. Come _for me_, all right? I don't want you to be dead. We're alive, and that's—that's it, you bastard, come with me, that's what I want, oh God, with me, just like this, I'm coming, oh yes, you son of a bitch, _come with_—

I squeezed my eyes tight, tight enough to see water rushing past, and bit down. Snape's throat vibrated, his groan shivering in my mouth like a swallowed curse, and I caught the swell of a pulse between our pricks. I pushed down, chasing it, and rode his arching hips up and up with feverish ease, sobbing with gratitude and rocking, milking his orgasm for my own ends until I made it to the edge and spilled right over.

No sharp ecstasy, no spurting sensation. It just melted out of me, warm and glorious and hazy and spreading, an outburst of bliss rippling to the horizon. I let myself be carried on it, farther and farther from my body, held pinned by the pressure of a long, cool finger in my arse, until I coasted without stopping over the line into blackness.

xxxxx

When I woke up, I was stretched warm and dry in a St. Mungo's bed, a Sticking Charm holding my wand on the nightstand beside me. The room was dim and smelled of herbs, and the murmuring figures casting diagnostic spells over me wore healer's robes. I was far away from the river. Far from drowning. And far, I had no doubt, from Snape, who had performed his usual vanishing act. _Let me stay dead_. If not for the evidence of my bruised muscles, banged-up ribs, and missing bit of tooth, I might really have dreamed the whole thing.

I saw them then, rising from their chairs in the corner, swimming toward me out of the gloom. The faces I'd hallucinated while I was dying. Ron and Hermione. Ginny. Home. I smiled and stretched out a hand to let them know it was going to be all right.

Hermione reached me first and laced our fingers together. "Oh, Harry. They said you almost died."

"That's some sort of luck you've got there, mate." The edge of the mattress sagged as Ron sat down and gripped my knee. Stubble covered his cheeks, and even though he tried making a joke of it, I could tell he was upset.

Ginny came to stand by the head of the bed and brushed a lock of hair out of my eyes. I wanted to say I was sorry, but she leaned down, kissed my scar, and whispered, "Next time wait for me, all right?"

I nodded. It felt grand to have all three of them touching me, anchoring me against the rising tide, the waves of sleep washing closer and closer.

Nobody could explain how I'd turned up in hospital. As for what had happened—I told them only what they needed to know. When the mediwitch saw how my eyes kept closing, she shooed everyone out the door. I watched them go and wished guiltily that Snape would come back. Sneak into my room now that I was alone, visit me in secret so I could stretch out on top of him and forget everything else. Sleep. Dream. Burrow under his robes and snuggle my cock against his body.

It was totally mental. I wished it anyway. Sometimes we want things that just don't make sense.

A few hours later I woke with a hard-on and a question dangling in my head. Why hadn't he used warming charms? He could have. It would have been the obvious thing to do. There was no need to strip me naked and wrap me in his robes. No need at all.

Before falling back to sleep, I wondered if I owed him a life debt now. And why he always came for me. And for the first time, why he always left me behind.


End file.
